Ranger Dark Side/Bright Side Part IV

With NFL football's preseason well underway - can the NHL be far behind? And in honor of football's return - we're going to play a little Monday Morning Quarterback (even though today is not Monday).

In other words - we're going to do our 4th installment of some Ranger second-guessing - and look at the worries - the concerns - in short: the dark side of our Ranger thoughts with the season less than four weeks away. But because it's still summer and we believe in optimism in our life and our sports-rooting (and our blogs) we're going to balance all that negativity with a little positive energy. So here we go once again with - Ranger Dark Side-Bright Side:

Dark Side: General Manager Glen Sather and Coach John Tortorella have cleaned out almost half of last year's team. That is no way to build consistency.

Bright Side: Last year's team was not one you wanted to preserve. We couldn't score, we didn't pressure the puck, and we didn't defend all that well. Not exactly a winning combination - and exactly the kind of consistency you don't want. Sometime you need to throw stuff out and start over - and this is one of those times

Dark Side: The Olympics this year are going to make it harder on the Rangers. The compressed schedule makes it tough on the players in Tortorella's up-tempo game. More games in less nights will exhaust our players

Bright Side: Our opponents are also playing a compressed schedule. So that means they will also have more games in less days and will also be tired - and so our pressure-the-puck style will be more effective against them - if we don't collapse while running it.