Team is awful right now. Hard to even watch. No shots, no chances, no life on the team or in the building. Not good right now. Since that TB game we have seen some bad hockey. Not sure what you do to get out of this funk.
We've gone from one of the best offensive teams to god awful in the offensive zone and look like a monkey trying to fuck a football. No one goes to the net for a rebound, no one is in front screening the goalie properly, can't get a forecheck going, can't get a cycle going. Just can't get anything going. And it has zero to do with last night. This team has played with zero heart lately. Posted that in the wrong thread. Just looks like we lost that game to TB and the team flipped a switch to "off" and stopped caring and trying offensively. Defensively we're still struggling in our zone to win board battles, But in the offensive zone we can't even put together 30 seconds of attack time. It's just a bad joke at this time.
It's humorous listening to joe trying to say Varmalov has made "great" saves. He's seeing EVERY shot and the Rangers are rarely going to the dirty areas to get the rebounds. The entire team has become Charmin soft out there. Ugh. Someone needs to light a fire under their ass. Might be time for a players only meeting if they lose this one. They need to call each other out and get fired up.
Not one of their lines is showing any activity in the offensive zone. Very strange even for the Rangers. There is nothing that shows me they are capable of coming back. Not a good time for back to back games, specially when the other team had the previous night off.
Without Stepan and with Brassard not doing much their C group is below average. Lindberg is solid but Hayes has struggled in his sophomore season.
McIlrath has hands down been our best dman. Least amount of turnovers, physical in front of net, physical on the boards. Be nice if any of our other lousy dmen would look at the rookie and play more physical like him. I might have a heart attack the next time Staal wins a physical board battle, not just poking with his stick.
And that play by Kreider sums up the Rangers play lately. Weak on the puck, try to be too fancy, get knocked off the puck, get no shot on a breakaway.
At least they didn't get shut out I guess. This team needs to work on one timers. A lot of chances to get off one timers and instead they settled the puck, allowed the defense to shift over and the goalie to get over and then take the shot. Need to improve that immediately.
Stepan can't come back soon enough. This team blows beyond belief without him. They really need to get rid of Boyle. He is completely useless at this point. At least MSL had a good regular season at this point last season. Boyle looks like 50 year old gimp out there.
To me it has always been about the O on this team...that was always my concern. Etem has done nothing. Miller almost nothing. Hayes has struggled. Kreider is useless. Fast nothing. Stoll nothing. Moore nothing. Stalberg nothing. That is a lot of nothing upfront. I liked our forward depth coming in, but that was under the assumption that Kreider and Hayes would take steps up. Miller and Etem would be threats. And a 4th line mix of Fast/Moore/Stoll/Stalberg would do well as 4th line guys. Kreider, Miller, and Etem being useless has really hurt us. Hayes being whatever inconsistent has as well. Outside of Lindberg and maybe Zucc, no one on O has showed up. As usual our O is a huge concern. The D will be fine. Yandle has been getting better. McIlrath has played well. McD and G have gotten better. Klein was playing really well, and will be back in 2 weeks. Staal...yeah he has been awful. And Boyle has been better the past handful of games. So I am just not worried about the D, and never was. The O...yeah that is a huge concern to me. I think we need some sort of change and new blood up there. Very stale.
We got new blood out there, his name is Tanner Glass. I am not sure why Megna was called up and has not been used at all. I understand why the gum chewing fella behind the bench used Glass against the isles. I don't know why they needed Glass tonight.
The D being fine gets us 2-1 defeats......the O, and I don't care where it comes from, needs to step it up.......or this down period may be longer than I would hope.
