Come On, Somebody!

For your New York Rangers this season there has been a lot of focus on conditioning, forechecking, accountability, work ethic, and even something called “heart”.

These are all admirable goals for a hockey team. But in the end, the most useful goal of all for a hockey team is scoring actual goals.

You have to score to win. At the end of the game they count up all the goals - and if you scored the most - guess what? - you won.

Last year's Ranger team had plenty of intangibles and plenty of grit and fight. What we needed was some goal lights to go on. That's what finished us off last year

This season we have been blessed with Marian Gaborik - an elite goal scorer and one of the nicest - team-first - superstars you are ever likely to see in a Ranger uniform. Gaborik is all we could have hoped for and much more.

But Gabs, last time I checked, is just one guy. We're going to need some more if we're going anywhere this season.

We need someone else - or several someone else's to step up and score a few also.

Gaborik has 13 goals. But our next best? Kotalik with that rifle-like shot of his has 6. And after that? Prospal has 5. Girardi, Anisimov, and Delzy have 4. Higgins has 2. Seanny has only 2.

We can't survive like this. It can't be just Gabs every night. We need some legitimate scoring on that second line.

Because if Gaborik and Prospal are the first line - and the primary PowerPlay line and the Primary Shorthanded line - sooner or later this will catch up with us. I thought we were supposed to be protecting our best player - not exposing him.

We need that number two line - whoever they end up being - to start scoring. And not having Dubinsky in the lineup for a few weeks makes it all that much harder.

So somebody - Sean - Higgy - Lisin - Cally - one of you guys - start shooting the puck in the net and get hot.

Because otherwise - this is going to be a long season.