According to an interview by my fearless leader, Joe MacDonald at NY Sportsday, Captain  Chris Drury chalked up last night’s loss to immaturity. In fact, Drury said, in so many words, most of problems with the team this season can be attributed to immaturity which in turn has lead to inconsistency. Because the quality of the sound was poor, I could not hear the audio file  of the Drury interview provided with Joe’s article.

I wish that Drury would expound on what his concept of maturity is? Is he referring to the fact the the youngsters on the Rangers are inexperienced and have not matured into full blown NHL players, ie  Del Zotto, Gilroy, Dubinsky Anisimov and Lisin, to name a few? Or, is Drury calling the behavior of his teammates immature leading to inconsistent play? If it is the former, time will help that, If it’s the later, then Drury really needs to turn the mirror on himself and the other veterem players on this team and look at the inconsistency there. 

If I were looking for an inconsistent player in last night’s game, I would clearly point the finger at Drury himself.  Drury lost 60% of his faceoffs, including that key faceoff at the end of the game. The Rangers were 6 on 4 with Lundqvist pulled and Montreal’s Pouilet in the box for hooking. It  may have been immature for Del Zotto to try and stick check the puck away from Plekanic instead of taking the body but he wouldn’t have been in that situation if his Captain had won the damn face off in the first place.

 In fact, if Drury hadn’t lamely lost the face of to Scott Gomez on the Metropolit powerplay goal, the Rangers wouldn’t have gotten burned on the bogus holding penalty called on Prust.  Drury can’t be inconsistent because he’s immature. He’s a veteran in this league. He’s just inconsistent because that’s all he’s shown since he donned the Ranger sweater.

If the truth be told, the most immature and inconsistent person on the entire team is the coach. The bottle throwing incident in Washington last playoffs not withstanding, Tortorella’s arrogant, immature attitude with the press and his inconsistent treatment of some players has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that he might be the biggest problem of all on this team.

Posted under New York Rangers