A Losing Day for Both The Rangers and The Whale

October 8, 2011 | Posted by Leslie Treff

The Rangers opened their season yesterday, losing to the Los Angeles Kings 3-2 in OT. The best part of the game for the Rangers was Ryan Callahan’s 11 shots and his first period goal. Today, New York also got beyond regulation, but wound up losing again–this time to the Anaheim Ducks, 2-1, in a shootout.

Both games were played in Sweden and native son Henrik Lundqvist was outstanding in goal. Today he all but stood on his head to keep the Rangers in the game, stopping 27 of 28 shots. Callahan also had a great game today, as did Michael Sauer on defense, who at one point lost his helmet and just continued to get in the way of every shot and opposing player that he could. There were times when Sauer was just putting on a clinic out there on the ice.

But the love ends there. The team did not look the same as it had in either training camp or the pre-season. In general the defense looked lackluster, with pairs not working well together, and the blueliners just letting the Ducks back them into their own zone. This could be the result of the upheaval that has been caused by the uncertainty about Marc Staal’s condition, but it’s pretty ugly out there.

There was a parade to the penalty box this afternoon, with the Rangers taking eight minors and one major (Mike Rupp trying to fight George Parros), and the offense looked anemic. Yes, Brad Richards roofed an amazing shot from in front of the net to tie the score with 2:15 left in the game, but otherwise, all the forwards but Callahan looked like they were playing at half speed. The Rangers are on their way back to North America tonight and have a week to straighten some of these matters out, but they sure do not look like a team ready to contend for what may be very important early points.

On the other hand, for the first 21 plus minutes tonight, the AHL Connecticut Whale looked like a Calder Cup contender. They scored three goals on Kris Newbury’s hat trick to jump out to a 3-1 lead in their season opener against Adirondack. But then, the Flyers’ AHL affiliate reeled off 5 straight goals, and the Whale’s night was done.

It was somewhat of a surprise that Cam Talbot started between the pipes tonight for the Whale, as Chad Johnson was expected to be the frontrunner for the number one netminder position. But Talbot was called upon, and at times looked very good. On many of the goals against, he had no chance, because of defensive lapses in front of him, but there were a couple of issues that clearly showed themselves tonight. First, Talbot has trouble handling the puck–twice he went behind the net to pass the puck to a defenseman and got himself in trouble. While it could have been a fluke, he looked very unsure of himself and perhaps should stay in net. The other issue that I saw was that he often went down too early, taking himself out of the play. This resulted in more than one Adirondack goal tonight and is clearly going to have to be worked on prior to any NHL appearance.

Besides Newbury, who did a nice job early on providing the finishing for the Whale, the Tommy Grant/Kelsey Tessier/Scott Tanski line had a very good night. Grant was hitting and grinding, and he was very effective in making room for Tessier and Tanski, who play very well together. Tessier had an excellent night on face-offs, and he and Tanski have developed some chemistry that has them on the ice when there is a need to be defensively responsible. It does look like they could also be an offensive threat, and hopefully we will be seeing more of them together in future games.

Most of the problems tonight occurred on defense, which needs quite a bit of work. Jyri Niemi had a bad game (despite being +1 for the game), Blake Parlett was up and down, and Wade Redden (who was -4 on the night) made some critical errors. Tomas Kundratek looked better than he did at Quinnipiac last weekend, has a very good shot, but needs more work positionally. Granted two blueliners were out due to injury (Pavel Valentenko and Stu Bickel), but most of the blueliners have been in the AHL before and need to do a better job out there.

Frankly, the player on the ice that impressed me most tonight was Adirondack’s Brayden Schenn, who was all over the ice, creating chances, making passes, picking his spots, and generally showing why he remains a top prospect in the game.

Categories: Rangers | Tags: | Comments Off