Shut Down – in Boss-town

Ugh.

Down the stretch we come and down the tubes we go. With everything on the line – facing the 8th seeded Boston team that had lost 11 of 12 at home and all three previous games to the Rangers – a Boston team that scores even less than we do – your New York Rangers were held scoreless for 56:56 until Michael Del Zotto provided the only Ranger scoring of the afternoon in a catastrophic – crushing – demoralizing – 2-1 loss.

At the exact moment we should be surging – we're floundering. The Rangers have just three wins in their last seven games. And the playoff seeds are getting further and further away.

The Goalies: Hank had 29 saves on 31 shots, a .935 save percentage. A good day – a bounce-back performance. But Rask had a save percentage of .958 – saving 23 of 24 shots. Just a little better.

Special Teams: The nail in our coffin. The Rangers had 6 powerplay opportunities. 2 goals would have won the game. 1 for 6 would have gotten us to OT. But we were 0 for 6, and that was the difference. Our PK was perfect in 3 tries.

New Veteran Rangers. Olli Jokinen is now a 4th line player, registering 6 penalty minutes and one shot. Gaborik had 4 shots and was -1. Eric Christensen lost 75% of his faceoffs and besides that – in 21:44 of ice time – was a ghost: no goals, no assists, no shots, no hits.

Our Returning Rangers contributed one assist – from the rejuvenated Sean Avery – who was the only Ranger who was +1 on the day.

The Kid Rangers - featured a good performance by Michael Del Zotto who scored the lone Ranger goal and was also +1 on the day.

In Conclusion: It ain't over til it's over – but the Rangers are rapidly falling out of contention. A five game winning streak right now would help – but may be impossible for us to pull off – and if we somehow did – might not be enough to get us over the top.
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Next Up: The 3D game against the Islanders Wednesday night. Since the Rangers have looked really “flat” for weeks – maybe this is exactly what we need. (Editor: stop that right now, you)
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Where We Stand - 10th place. 5 points out of 8th place. And only 7 points out of dead last in the East.