The Rangers are traveling through another dimension,
A dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind,
A journey into a hellish place in hockey’s time/space continuum

whose boundaries defy that of imagination.
That’s the signpost up ahead,
The Ranger’s next stop: The Islander Zone…

Once again, the Ranger’s lost to an Islander team that has been decimated by injury and is on the outside looking in to the playoff picture. The Islanders AHL level back up goaltender, one Wade Dubielewicz, showed Henrik Lundqvist, the Rangers $6.875 million dollar franchise goaltender, how it is done in regulation, in overtime and in the shoot out. Charming.

I don’t care if the goals were flukes or softies, you don’t give up 3 goals on 8 shots or less in your last two games and not take heat for it . I would have pulled Lundqvist after the third Islander goal to help him get his head out of his ass. The same goes for the heads of the rest of the Rangers in front of him. This game was starting to look like a replay of Sunday afternoon. The key difference was that Valliquette was able to stone the Flyers on the shoot out. Jeff Tambellini. Come on Henrik. You’ve gotta be kidding me.  

As Renney said on Sunday, that game looked like pond hockey and the Rangers were off to the races with the Flyers then and Islanders tonight, too. Let’s get our defense back to some semblance of the pre-Backman pairings. Rosival/Malik, Tyutin/Girard and Staal/Strudwick. Blown coverages, running around like headless chickens and giveaways up the wazoo were as much a factor as the shaky play of Lundqvist in tonight’s loss. I’ve seen enough of Backman for now. I’m not slamming the kid. I just don’t think that a playoff run is the right time to insert a new defenseman into a long standing lineup. I can’t wait for Mara to come back. I can’t believe I just said that.   

Let’s lay the lionshare of the guilt where it belongs, our lack of offense. If Messrs. Jagr, Straka, Shanahan, Avery and Dubinsky had shown up offensively tonight, I wouldn’t be so pissed off that the Islander’s made chumps of the Rangers again. I saw players entering the zone and instead of making a play, they looked around to see where the shooters were and who they could pass to. Hello, you are the shooter. Chris Drury understands this. He took the shot and scored a goal. Too bad no one else gets that game in and game out. The shots the “goal scorers” were taking were right into the Islander goaltender and for the most part imminently stoppable. The Rangers weren’t stacking the slot, weren’t working down low to screen Dubielewicz and they weren’t fighting for rebounds.

Lastly, when the chips are down the Captain of the team needs to step up. Jaromir Jagr shouldn’t be Captain and if he has a shred of decency he will decline the “C” next season. I blame Renney for pandering to him on the shoot outs. What the hell was he thinking putting Rosival out there? Malik would have been a better choice.

Thursday night the Rangers will literally be in “The Islander Zone”. Let’s hope they can pull their heads out of their asses long enough to get two points instead of one.

Tempest Fugit, Gentlemen!