NYR 0

Ottawa 2

These Ottawa Senators…when they weren’t busy trapping they were beating a path back to their own end, strategically retreating on the backcheck to render Ranger offensives null and void before the promissary notes of a Scott Gomez rush or a Chris Drury pass could pay dividends. And when they failed to backcheck, they made up for the momentary lapse by covering the slot, clogging the shooting lanes, making it difficult for the Rangers to get quality scoring chances, and canceling any chance whatsoever of an easy putback on a loose puck or a rebound.

Hmm…Could it be that’s partly where our Rangers out-of-town fortunes failed, where their more business-minded and harder working opponents succeeded? Setting aside the Laurel & Hardy that led to the second goal when Jason Strudwick inadvertently set a pick on a puckcarrying Chris Drury as he attempted to break out of the defensive zone, the initial goal against was clearly a result of a failure to hustle back and mark the loose man. A habitual, and given the quality of Ranger coaching, inexplicable Rangers’ curse, one that might lead to a second, 50-year Stanley-less drought if this team doesn’t correct what has become their trademark transgression.

Once again, the Rangers have no one to thank but King Henrik that the score wasn’t 4, or even 5 to nuthin’. And while overall goal production and goal surges like the one the Rangers enjoyed on opening night after a period and a half of somnambulism, long-term, like Google stock, can be projected to rise steadily and fall cyclically, but dip only slightly; the defense and backchecking forwards of this blue-chip team simply have to elevate their focus if they want to win their division and avoid the late season bottom-half conference scramble to qualify for the post-season.

Is it way too early to be prognosticating about Atlantic division standings and the regular season net results for the Eastern Conference playoff positioning? Not when so few points will separate so many solidly competitive foes — teams with plenty of snarl, and in small metro markets, not too much in the way of after-dark curriculum to distract them from taking the number of our Bright Lights, Big City, Broadway matinée heros.

Other Post-Game Notes, Observations & Conjecture

— Gosh, darn! Can one say too much about the play of newly designated number 5, one official rookie playing his first full-year in the Bigs, defenseman Dan Gerardi? Putting on some extra muscle mass in the off-season to ratchet up his overall game, Gerardi was indeed a physical presence in Ottawa last night, both in the Rangers’ end of the ice, and when challenging opposing wingers as they attempted to skirt past him as he held the point. He repeatedly moved the puck on the breakout simply, intelligently and quickly —once incorporating a neat, little semi-spinnerama before dishing the biscuit laterally to a forward with some steam and a forward trajectory. In a word, Gerardi inspires confidence. And at age 23, people. What will he play like in two-to-three years?

—The Chris Neil/Sean Avery hit, while unfortunate in that it took one of our favorites from the game (and hopefully only a game, no more) to my eye looked like a clean check, and the appearance of an offending elbow a matter of Neil’s deliberate follow-through after the collision. Scott Stevens would often make a similar motion, pushing through the finish of the check with his forearm. And we all can recall the endlessly replayed check on Eric Lindros when Stevens did just that. Yes, Avery had his head down and for a moment was vulnerable. But having one’s head down when receiving or playing the puck has always been the accepted liability — and one of the defining differentiators — of this dangerous game. And while the NHL and the referees may have good intentions in paying more strict attention to physical head-hunting, and by rule, illegal, methods of body contact. Hitting a guy with his head down with a shoulder or hip should not be outlawed from the NHL’s gladiatorial pageantry. That’s hockey. Beginning last season, and evidenced by the Neil call for elbowing, there clearly seems to be a worrisome trend to remove hard, admittedly, possibly injury producing, but nonetheless heretofore considered legal, bodychecking from the game. The liability here is more than the loss of spectator thrills. If the NHL and on ice officials don’t clarify what does and does not constitute an illegal hit — during the broadcast, Micheletti mentioned the league was concerned with hits levied upon players caught at a vulnerable or “helpless” moment (I think that was the wording, which, no fault of Joe, here, could hardly be less definitive) — the danger is that the game’s officiating could become hopelessly and frustratingly ambiguous. With one referee perhaps known to be more tolerant of clean but hard hits (old time hockey), while another referee calls the game, or an ersatz, would-be infraction committed against a player skating for the home team, in a way that will ultimately sanitize the NHL’s DNA.

— Granted, the Iceman isn’t a graduate of New York’s F.I.T., but is it me, or do both the home and away versions of the New York Rangers’ new RBK Edge Uniform Systems sport an over-measurement of white below the traditional, horizontal waist stripe, such that the visual effect created as our guys are skating away makes it appear that they are wearing some form of adult diaper.

— Kudos to MSG for creating their interactive feature, Game On!, which offers fans the opportunity to post questions or comments on a dedicated blog to which Al and Stan then respond during the first and second intermission.

— Devils Schadenfreude: Part Deux…Just when you thought it could never get much weirder than it perennially is for the team in the swamp across the river, Lou-cifer Lamoriello’s latest minion, rookie coach Brent Sutter, goes deeper and deeper into his mind-f%#*k player motivation Book of the Dead — stripping the captain’s jersey of his ‘C,’ breaking up successful tandems — and sits his franchise, future hall of famer netkeep, Martin Brodeur, in just the Devils second match of the season. Congrats to our friend and supreme gentleman, former NYR Kevin Weekes on earning Sutter his first NHL win. But I get an unsettling foreboding that only grows with each successive sound bite heard and move from behind the bench observed. How long before the sound of a muffled implosion drifts across the Hudson from the vicinity of Newark and the Prudential Arena, and as the foul smoke clears, we see John MacLean standing behind Lou’s bench?