Pucks on Broadway: Analysis, Discussion, and Musings on the New York Rangers

After a scintillating Canadian road trip, I needed time to express my joy and pleasure about how well the Rangers have been playing so I took a blogging break for the weekend. OK, so sarcasm maybe is more difficult to portray online than I thought. Nonetheless, the Rangers got one point on this trip in which they really didn't earn any.

So, rather than writing another postgame blog about the same complications and short comings of the Blueshirts, I chose to enjoy my birthday weekend and leave it until Monday to go over a few items.

First, the roster changes.

Marek Malik was scratched, again, as was Ryan Callahan. I missed the pregame show and didn't catch what was wrong with Callahan, though I believe it was either illness or injury, but nothing serious. Malik apparently stormed out of the locker room when hearing he was a scratch. I think it's finally time to bite the bullet here. He's unhappy, the fans are unhappy, and it's just bad all around.

Next on the agenda is the refereeing. I am tired of all of the officiating talk. Yes, it is inconsistent. Yes, Colton Orr and Ryan Hollweg are unjustly crucified for their reputation. However, there has to be some responsibility. Hollweg did NOT need to make that hit from behind in the third period against Edmonton. Plain and simple. Was the penalty too much? Yes. But there is NO need for him to be making those boneheaded plays and every referee in the league is going to call that 100% of the time.

If Renney is going to use the fourth line so much, Hollweg and Orr have to start being smarter with their physical play. They are intimidating, hard working, and can shut down the other teams' offense, but none of that matters if they are taking poor penalties at inopportune times.

This leads us to ... discipline.

I have commented here about the lack of fire in the Rangers' bellies all season, that there is nobody, except perhaps Avery, who is showing enough heart. So what do the Rangers do? Start to show some heart and emotion, but at the expense of discipline. How do we know this? The Hollweg play. The Straka play. The Jagr play.

If you didn't catch the game, I alluded to the Hollweg hit earlier, Straka questionably hooked an Oiler while Jagr just ripped a player down in OT. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. If this is the emotion we are going to see, than you might as well go back to being lax Rangers because your penalty killing is not up to snub and you can't afford to take dumb useless penalties.

Enough of the negative however. On to the positive! Henrik Lundqvist had a strong rebound game, which will help him leading into the All Star break. The line of Brandon Dubinsky, Callahan, and Petr Prucha have brought a lot of energy and opportunities. In fact, you can make a strong case that the line has been the strongest over the past week.

The Rangers have a tough schedule ahead with Tampa Bay, Pittsburgh, Montreal , and Philly all on the agenda. This is at the same a great time to get on a role because each team is beatable, but it will require the discipline that has lacked recently.

On a couple side notes:

• I will be helping out The Dark Ranger with some of my fellow bloggers, so check his site. He will guesting here as well, given the necessity to keep the Rangers in check and me still needing to work.
• Inferno, over at Rangers' Review, asked where my mid-season report card was and I failed to mention that it is posted at Outside the Garden. Check the link on the top right.
• The Game Log, or glog, I did against Vancouver got some good reviews so we will be doing it more frequently. Check in and I'll give some advance notice, the next one should be Thursday night.
• Had a nice conversation last night with the Isles Blogger at a mandated dinner function for the girlfriend . Despite our disdain for each other's teams, it actually is pretty interesting what the Icelanders are doing for their bloggers and his site is definitely worth a read since he is very well informed.

Back to work for now, but as always, more to come...