A Sad Blur – Montreal shut out and light up Rangers 6-0

It's as if there was a voice over announcement as soon as the Rangers scored the last of their recent 14 goal explosion: “That Concludes the Rangers Mini Scoring Streak and We Now Return You To Their Regular Scheduled Badness”

But let's take this step by step.

We outshot the Canadiens 32 to 31. We outhit them 24 to 16. The faceoffs were even at 22 apiece.

But we could not score any goals and got the crap kicked out of us.

It's like a hangover from the Flyers game. Philadelphia showed everyone how to shut us down – shadow Gaborik – hit him – and shake him up. And when the Rangers don't fight back – when Gabby realizes he's on his own – he can't focus on goals. And when our top line stops scoring – and the other lines can't score anyway – we're finished.

But – we like looking at the bright side over here – John Tortorella is no dummy and they will be working hard on trying to fix this. Aaron Voros did stick up for Gaborik this time – so that's something.

Okay – here's the autopsy

The Goalies: Halak shut us out. 32 shots – 32 saves – and you can figure out the save percentage yourself. Hank was pulled after letting in 4 goals on his first 15 shots. Of course – many of the shots were very high quality chances. With Chad Johnson starting an AHL games (I wish he had started here) the Rangers were forced to made do by dabbling with Zaba (I know - I'm thinking about Fred Flintstone too but we'll do that another time). Matt saved 14 of his 16 shots. So your save percentages were Hank: a jaw-dropping 733%, and Zaba .875%.

Special Teams: We were 0-2 on the powerplay – actually negating 2 PPs with penalties of our own. Montreal was 2-5 on the PP, and that's enough to ensure our loss right there,

Nobody Scored – so not much to say there. Rozsival was out of position on one of our goals – but when you get scored on 6 times it the whole game becomes a sad blur.

In Conclusion: Can we please go back to scoring large bunches of goals instead of getting shut out? It's a lot, more fun to watch. Your New York Rangers are once again a team in crisis. When you're still (barely) in playoff position – you can't say “rock bottom” but “reeling” certainly applies now.
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Next Up: If we can't beat Montreal, how about the Pittsburgh Penguins? Like it or not, the Crosby Crybabies – I mean the defending Stanley Cup Champions – will play at MSG Monday at 7pm.
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Where We Stand: 7th place. Tied in points with 6th place Philly and 8th place Montreal – both of whom just shut us out. And the thundering herd is just behind us - were just 3 points out of 13th place.