Brunch With The Bruins - Ranger Recap

We were outshot 29-23, outhit 41 to 28 and out face-offed (you know what I mean) 25-21. We were penalized 10 minutes to Boston's 4.

On the other hand - we won.

And we won... weirdly. For us anyway. All season we had never scored less than 3 goals without losing. But yesterday we scored 1 goal and won, improbably, in a shut out.

The Goalies: Thomas for the Bruins, played really well – stopping .957 percent of the shots he faced. That's good enough to win most days. But not yesterday. Not against Lundqvist as his best. In baseball the term "stopper" means a star pitcher that can go out and stop a losing streak and get his team right again. In similar fashion, Hank rose up and pitched a shutout and got us back on track. He stopped all 29 shots that came his way for a 100% save percentage.

Special Teams: We were 0-2 on the PowerPlay – but made up for it by going 5-5 on the Penalty Kill. This was huge as it negated the big disparity in penalty minutes (10-4 favoring the Bruins).

The New Veteran Rangers with Gaborik back in the lineup made most what little noise there was. Gabs had the only goal and Prospal got an assist.

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Higgins Suicide Watch: Chris had 2 more shots for a total of 26 on the season. Still no goals. Poor guy.
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The Kid Rangers were quiet. Dane Byers played nearly 6 minutes without registering a shot. Gilroy and Del Zotto each had a shot on goal. Anisimov had no shots in 10:23 of ice time.
The Returning Rangers gave us one assist from Staal. Callahan led the team with 6 shots. Dubinsky had 3. But no goals.

Defense on Offense: Just Staal's assist. This unit has been quieting down – which is not good.

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In Conclusion: It's really good to not lose – but the offense continues to fizzle – particularly for players not named Gaborik. It's great to see Hank throw a great game out there – but he's not going to shut out everyone – so this isn't exactly a blueprint for winning hockey games. On the other hand – if we can keep this level of defense up and start adding back our offense – that would be a pretty powerful sign of better things to come.

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The much needed win puts us at 9-5-1 and rights the ship. At least until next time.

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Next Up: A day off today – followed by a trip to Vancouver to take on the 8-7 Canucks with a 10pm start on Tuesday.