Tonight Ryan Hollweg had a monster game and wanted to play Santa to his teammates. Even though his heart was in the right place, no pucks went off his stick and into the net. And that’s okay. No pucks went off of Jagr or Shanahan’s sticks either, despite the fact they had many more opportunities. God love him, Ryan Hollweg tries his best and put in supreme effort but the kid has hands of stone. What’s Jagr and Shanahan’s excuse? 

To their credit, what had to be a worn out Ottawa Senator team took advantage of their opportunites after playing in a hard fought loss last night in Chicago. Martin Gerber was able to repell al but one of the shots the Rangers took directly into his midsection. The Rangers had 35 shots on Gerber, all but one of them imminently stoppable, low percentage softballs.

The Rangers were looking good in the first period after Gomez scored four minutes in but it went downhill after that. Spezza scored after a weird deflection of a slapshot off Staal that beat Lundqvist and Ottawa went on to score two more unanswered goals in the slot, down low. Lately, Henrik has been going down and staying down, letting those goals in over him.

More than anything, the Rangers burned themselves by not scoring on their MIA powerplay. They were 0 for 5 tonight. Their second unit looked better then the first most times tonight but that isn’t saying much. It looked more like an Ottawa powerplay when the Rangers had the man advantage.  

The Rangers can’t score with the man advantage. They can’t score 5 on5. You knew when they went down 3-1 with 9 minutes left to play in the game that they would not stage a comeback. They are that predictable. People were heading for the exits to hit Macy’s for a little late Christmas shopping.

No Christmas Miracles tonight folks!

PS. Someone should tell Avery that, all good intentions aside, it is not smart to throw punches right after having wrist surgery.