Friday, November 21, 2008

Are the Rangers Really the Man Behind the Curtain?

In today's Slap Shots, Lynn Zinsler wonder's whether the Rangers are a deeply flawed team who vaulted to first place by papering over their flaws, or a plucky team who can overcome their shortcomings.

That got me to thinking and I came up with this analogy. This Rangers team is like the Wizard of Oz and the Canucks just played the part of Toto by pulling back the curtain to reveal this flawed team.

It seems that if Henrik Lunqvist has an off night, we're toast. As Scott Burnside said in the below post, you have to wonder why we brought in high octane offensive players this summer such as Naslund, Zherdev and Redden if we're going to be playing the same defensive system as last year.

This system is also holding back our younger snipers such as Dawes, Prucha and Korpikoski.

And I have to ask this, if this system is set-up to keep things close until we're able to scratch out a few goals, why do we have to rely on Lundqvist to be amazing every night? I remember when the Devils played their system Martin Brodeur barely had to break a sweat.

Why not play an up-tempo style of play, which suites our personnel much better, and if our defense gets caught up ice on an offensive rush Lundqvist can still hold the fort.

We're putting all the pressure on Lundqvist now anyway, we might as well try to score some goals.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Good post. I hope that Vancouver game wasn't a bad omen or a sign of games to come.