Rangers Spring Break goes wrong

Hey ya’ll. Now I’m home on break for a week and I didn’t get to see the 2 full games the Rangers had in Florida, (one partly because I was blacked out Friday), but I did watch the highlights and talk to a couple of friends, so here is what I think on a couple of issues:

- It looked as though Friday night the Panthers just plain played better than us. They were making great passes and plays to lead to odd-man rushes and wayyyy to many breakaways. I guess the defense had too much fun this break. Anyways the highlights weren’t anything special. They had good goals and we had good goals, we just couldn’t beat them.

- Saturday night looked a little differently. They got their first goal on a crash the net play at the end of the 2nd with Picard jamming it home out front, not much you can really nitpick on that. Same goes for the 2nd by St.Louis, a tip and two bounces gives them a 2-0 lead. The Rangers seemed to play much better after that goal. What can you say when Sjostrom gets absolutely robbed by Smith on the wrap around? Nothing. What can you say when Picard makes a kick save and a beauty at that on Jagr with 6 minutes to go? Nothing. It just seemed like both nights we just weren’t meant to win, so I think the Rangers should take this weekend with a grain of salt and move on to Tuesdays date with Crosby & Co.

- Henrik Lundqvist took his break pretty seriously. He kept the Rangers in it on both games and made some fantastic saves of deflections and breakaways. We need another great performance on Tuesday to stifle the Pens.

- Will Renney change the lines now? Who knows. I didn’t watch the games shift-in and shift-out so I’m not one to judge right now, but I bet you no major changes will be made. Announcers say he was thinking about it after Friday night, but who will he move? You can’t break up Avery-Dubi-Jagr now, and its tough to break up Dawes-Gomez-Shanny, so only time will tell what happens.

- As I said, Pens are up next on Tuesday at the Garden, lets hope we find our touch again. – Rob