Sunday, November 23, 2008

Renney Cautiously Optimistic About A Gomez Return Tomorrow

Scott Gomez took part in a full practiced today for the first time since going down with an ankle injury.

Sam Weinman at The Rangers Report reports that Tom Renney is "cautiously opitimistic" on Gomez for tomorrow's game against Phoenix.

Here are the lines if Gomez is ready to go...

Drury-Gomez-Callahan
Naslund-Dubinsky-Zherdev
Voros-Korpikoski-Fritsche
Sjostrom-Betts-Orr

Renney also tinkered with the defensive pairings as well, pairing Michal Rozsival with Marc Staal and Paul Mara with Dmitri Kalinin.

...i always try to stay on an even keel with the Rangers. I don't get overly excited when they win and I don't act like the sky is falling when they lose, but this team is in desperate need of a change. I'm not saying a sign Sundin change, but maybe a firing a certain special teams coach change.

...i'm even beginning to worry that this team is starting to tune Renney out. His benching of certain players (Voros and Zherdev) for poor play, while defending others (Rozsival) has to be wearing thin on some guys. And their complete lack of effort yesterday may be more of a clue that players are growing tired of Renney's game plan.

...there's still reason to be positive as we'll be getting back our best play-maker very soon, but there are some very alarming things going on with this team right now that maybe only a shake-up will cure.

2 comments:

jameskong123 said...

two teams in toronto? This is a pretty interesting article. Y'all should check it out
http://www.fanzak.com/fzrants/Two_Teams_In_TO

fleisch said...

While Glen Sather has done a very nice job filling the Rangers with young talent both in the NHL and in Hartford, he has done a very poor job this off season with free agent signings and managing the CAP.
It is those last 2 items that has this Rangers team in a bit of trouble over the last 10 games. Why did Sather sign Redden and Rosival to long term deals at about4-5 mil a season when both were coming off awful years, and this team claerly need a physical D-man like say Brooks Orpik who was available and coming off a huge season and playoff run.
Why spend a mil each on playes like Rismiller and Fritshe, when this team had more than enough 4th line wingers and not enough pure goal scores. Why not trade Prucha, even for a low draft pick, since he has clearly fallen out of favor with the coaching staff. Those 3 guys are 3.5 mil in CAP space and dont allow Renney to call up any defensemen to either give guys a est or bench a plyer when thay are under perfoming ( Rozi ands Redden)

Sather needs to find a way to shed some dead weight and get someone physcal on the Blue line and a proven scorer on the wings, or else this team will be out of the playoffs again in the 2nd round.