Don’t get me wrong. I think overall Torts has done a good job this season. But tonight he cut off his nose to spite his face. Benching Gaborik, after his lazy play at the end of the second period leading to the Devil’s goal, was bad coaching.

On the last Ranger powerplay, Hagelin and Gaborik were both on the bench. WTF Torts? Why the hell did Torts have Gaborik out at the end of  the second period anyway? You knew the Devils were going for the full court press to try and tie the score. Bad coaching.

Gaborik didn’t play for the first 11 minutes of the third period. Torts should have thrown him right back out there. He couldn’t have played any worse then the guys that were on the ice. Bad coaching.

How many games have we witnessed the Rangers getting scored on at the end a first or second period? All too often they let up at the end of periods. They are like trail horses going back to the barn. Torts acts like Gaborik was the only player ever guilty of letting up at the end of a period.

Torts should have called a time out in the beginning of third period before the Devils scored the third goal. The Rangers were chasing the Devils around like headless chickens. He should have burned the time out and tried to regroup his team. Bad coaching.

His last mistake was to call the time out at the end of the game and give the gassed Devils time to regroup and defend the six on five. Bad coaching.

Torts is not infallible. Sometimes pride comes before a fall. No coach in their right mind should use a playoff game  as an object lesson for a player in the Chateau Bow Wow. Rather then rallying the team, benching Gaborik and not using Hagelin stymied the Rangers in this game. Bad coaching.

The Devils used that negative energy to their advantage. Torts gave the Devils some ammunition.  Even after Gaborik was inserted back into the lineup to try to infuse some offense, the psychological damage had already been done. Bad coaching.

Sure enough, at the post game presser, Torts refused to answer a question about his decision  to bench Gaborik. Maybe Torts should get off his high horse and try and be civil to the press instead of answering with his usual arrogant monosyllabic answers.

I have a very low opinion of Mike Milbury but his criticism of Torts tonight was fair and not unjustified.

Next Question.

Don’t ask me how I did it. Dumb Luck. But listening to the game on the radio brought me back to my childhood and teen years. My older brother and I would listen to Ranger games on the radio when they weren’t being broadcast on WWOR TV Chanel 9.  Listening to Dave and Kenny reminded me of the days of  “The Big Whistle” Bill Chadwick and Sal “Redlight” Messina.

So, henceforth, I will listen to the games on the radio. Watching the games on TV is an anxiety riddled experience for me. I just wind up cursing at the TV like a drunken sailor. Listening to the game live on the radio could add years to my life and clean up my in game vocabulary. I can always DVR the games and re-watch them later.

I watched the last three games of the Ottawa series and the first four games of the Caps series that I taped while I was away on vacation. I had to play catch up when I got home. Now I can listen live and watch the games after. So much easier on the ears and constitution. Listening to the radio is a lost art. It stirs the imagination. It makes you think.

Radio. Who would have thunk it? Everything old is new again.

Side note: The Rangers won last night and that’s a good thing. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. They still have to win three more games. But it was sweet to see  hear Our King get a shut out and Fatso let up a soft goal.

Pundits are all over the XM radio today pushing the gloom and doom. Enough already. The Rangers found a way to get it done all season. I have every faith they will do so again on Saturday night. If anyone had been asked in October if the Rangers would be on the brink of making it to the Eastern Conference Final, I’ll bet the answer would have been a resounding NO.

These kids have exceeded expectation all season. They have faced the adversity of losing Staal and Sauer for over half the season and taken it in stride.  Kids who have never played at the NHL level before have come in and performed remarkably well. This team has had no legitimate powerplay or powerplay quarterback for the entire season but managed to win the Atlantic Division, place first in the Eastern Conference and they came within two points of winning the President’s Trophy.

And, to all the haters out there who have been down on Brandon Dubinsky, I put it to you that Dubi is sorely missed right now. Dubi didn’t light the lamp as many times as he should have this season but I never saw him phone one in. His battle level was always high. To bad that cannot be said for a few others on this team.

I cannot explain what happened last night. But after such a dramatic win on Monday, a little let down was inevitable. I don’t think the team no showed the game. I think it’s a combination of exhaustion and anxiety. Anyone who is claiming John Tortorella was out coached  or that the Rangers phoned it in needs to get off my blog and never come back.

No matter what happens on Saturday, the Rangers have made their fans proud. They’ve had one hell of a season. They do not deserve our derision. They deserve our support to the end, be it bitter or sweet.

Let’s Go Rangers!

PS. I was in Europe from April 20 until May 4. Thank goodness for DVRs and live streaming internet websites. Thanks to my friend Dominik in Germany who shared his link with me. I was watching the triple overtime game as we sailed across the Atlantic on the Queen Mary 2 on our way home.

I would not encourage anyone to rag on Dubinsky. There always has to be a whipping boy. This season it is Brandon Dubinsky. Saturday night some jerk sitting behind me was yelling “trade Dubi ASAP”. He was moaning that Dubi getting the game misconduct was the reason the Rangers lost. Dubi is a waste of cap space. Yada, yada, yada. I felt like turning around and telling this moron to STFU. I guess the guy who sits in front of me wanted to do the same thing a month ago when I was yelling at Boyle. Pot, Kettle, Black, eh?

Is goal production all people see when they evaluate a player’s worth? Do people think Brandon Dubinsky deliberately stopped scoring  after he got his big fat contract last off season? Dubinsky’s production has dropped off but I am sure it isn’t because he isn’t trying. He kills penalties, battles hard along the boards and, as he demonstrated on Saturday, sticks up for his team mates. He’s been holding his stick too tight all season. I have every faith he’ll come around.

During the regular season fans can and should voice their displeasure when a certain player or the team phones a game in. The playoffs are not the time or the place for negativity. Saturday night I realized that the playoffs are the time for cheering the team on.

Let’s Go Rangers!

Shea Weber gets a $2500.00 fine for what he did to Zetterberg and Carl Haglin is suspended for three game for aggressively finishing his check on Alfredsson? Bullshit.

A disgusting goon like Carkner only gets one game after trying to pound Brian Boyle’s head into the ice for face washing poster boy Karlsson? More bullshit.

If Hagelin has to sit for three games, Alfredsson better be out of commission for the same amount of time. If Alfredsson is back in the lineup for Ottawa tomorrow and looking no worse for the wear, he must have been embellishing the effect of the hit. If that’s the case, then I’d put a bounty on Alfredsson and hit him as hard as possible at every opportunity.

Brendan Shanahan is a sham. He’s a disgrace.  He’s a sellout. He takes the  league’s coin. And to think after the Shanahan Summit I thought Brendan Shanahan was securing his legacy. Instead he’s destroying his legacy. All he has managed to become is a corporate stooge. He’s Bettman’s bagman.

Brendan Shanahan better stay away from MSG. He should no longer be welcome in our building. In fact, I’d go as far as expunging him from Ranger history. Too bad he scored his six hundredth goal while he was a Ranger. If Shanahan ever sets foot in the Garden again, I hope the Garden Faithful give it to him but good.

Shanny Sucks.

We got to the city early to drink in the atmosphere and to check out the festivities in front of the Garden on 7th Avenue. Just as we walked out of the parking garage, we saw the Playoff Buses pass us on 31st Street. We missed the bus! We hightailed it over to the Molly Wee to grab some dinner and were pleased to find some friends with which to dine.

Missing the bus turned out for the best. We like to get up to the Section early to start blowing up the balloons. Thanks to Jimmy and Tom and all the denizens of 409 who helped make this, the final playoff opening game balloon drop in Section 409, one to remember. Even John Amirante looked up at it while he was singing the National Anthem.

The Section 409 Balloon Drop has become an opening night and playoff tradition since the lockout. The organization even featured it on their season tickets.  Too bad many of the fans who have participated in the Balloon Drop over the years may no longer be able to afford seats in the West Balcony next season. A balloon drop from the WB would be quite spectacular.

The Garden finally decided to add to our home grown opening celebration with their official victory streamers at the end of the game. Took them long enough to get with the program. One has to wonder if the Rangers keep winning will Dolan raise ticket prices again to help defray the cost of all the streamers.

Okay, enough with the bitching. Hey, how about them Rangers? I once compared Ryan Callahan to a young Stevie Yzerman. I got shouted down by naysayers who cried sacrilege. To those folks I say, excuse me? Cally many never get close to Yzerman’s numbers but damn if this young man isn’t cut from the same cloth. He takes the team on his back and leads by example.

Being the eternal pessimist, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop each time the Rangers scored. The dreaded two, three, (yikes), four goal lead. In fact, the Rangers were able to hold the Sens off the board until half way through the third period. By the numbers the teams were pretty even in SOG’s, Faceoffs and Hits.

The key stats of the game were Give Aways, Take Aways and Blocked Shots. Rangers were 3, 5 and 20. The Sens were 8, 2 and 12. So much for the Sens trap and transition. They weren’t getting the Rangers to cough up too many pucks in the neutral zone. The Rangers passing through the neutral zone was decent.

As far as the officiating goes, my only beef was the bogus tripping call on Prust. Could Stu Bickel have been more obvious with that crosscheck? Boyle scores a goal AND gets under Karlsson’s skin. Many of the talking heads said that if the Rangers could get Karlsson off his game, the Rangers would have a better chance of winning. Hey, they can’t be wrong all the time.

The Rangers couldn’t score on the powerplay but neither could Ottawa. No harm, no foul. Lundqvist weathered the storm at the beginning of the first period. Tortorella called a judicious time out. It was an all around team effort and a solid win. Having never seen the Rangers have home ice advantage in the opening round of the playoffs since the lockout, I’m liking it. Time will tell if Vancouver is cursed by winning the President’s Trophy.

I will be at the game tomorrow night by the good graces of another dear friend, Nick Annunziata. I’ll be back home in 409 for what may be the last time ever. I hope the Rangers have as much success tomorrow as they did last night.  It was great seeing so many happy faces at the game, so pumped up, so ready to cheer their team on. The atmosphere was like New Year’s Eve in Times Square.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind ?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne ?

For 409, my dear,
for 409,
we’ll take the Cup with kindness yet,
for 409.

Let’s Go Rangers!

They say you can’t halt progress. But the renovation of the Garden is having the same effect on the Garden Faithful, the long time residents of the Blues Seats, as the Cross Bronx Expressway had on the Bronx. The Garden renovation is killing a neighborhood of fans.

While I don’t think James Dolan will ever be in the same league as power broker Robert Moses, his Garden renovation is having the same effect as Moses’ plan for the Long Island Parkways and Jones Beach. Dolan wants to get the undesirables out of his Garden in favor of the well heeled patrons who could really care less about what happens on the playing surfaces. They just want to be in the building because it is now fashionable.

Moses deliberately designed the Long Island Parkway Bridges to be too low to allow bus loads of undesirable city dwellers to enjoy Jones Beach and Sunken Meadow State Park. Dolan has done away with over 400 of the old Blue Seats to keep the undesirable fans out of his building. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the subscribers who don’t drink the Gardens kool-aide are being punished. People who chanted “Sather Sucks” and “Fire Sather” when Sather deserved it are  the type of fans Dolan wants out.

Dolan is pricing the True Blue fan out of the Garden. These die hard fans have supported the Rangers and the Knicks in good times and bad. And, believe me, there have been more bad times then good. Dolan is breaking up whole sections of  the fan base in the Blue Seats and charging exorbitant prices for seats next season to pay for his Garden renovation.

Most of the subscribers previously seated in Section 409 are being forced take seats in the West Balcony where they will have to pay $64.00 per ticket. The price of a Blue Seat this season was $39.00 for subscribers.  That’s about 40% more. Very few people I have spoken to in 409 will be able to afford that.

And, to add insult to injury, West Balcony seats have less desirable sight lines. Being enclosed in glass adds nothing to the atmosphere. Worst of all, the patrons in the “B” row are going to get food and beer dumped on their heads by those seated on the Row C bar stools.

Those who are remaining in the remnants of the old blue seats next season will pay $50.00 per ticket. This season they paid $39.  It may not seem like a tremendous amount of money but for 41 home games each ticket is now $450.00 more.  After the Lockout, the Blue Seats were going for $26.00. $50.00 is almost 100% more. What happens if there’s another Lockout?

The Rangers look to be a winning team for many years to come. All that can be said of the Knicks is that they are not terrible. Dolan will make his money now. But all things are cyclical. What will happen when the Rangers and Knicks fortunes turn? The are not run like the Red Wings, who haven’t missed the playoffs in over 15 years.

People that lived in the path of the Cross Bronx Expressway were cast out of their homes in the name of progress. Loyal season ticketholders of long standing are being cast out of their seats in the name of greed. Dolan better hope that Henrik Lundqvist has a long and successful career.

The really sad thing is that, knowing Ranger fans, the die hards will come back when the team isn’t doing well and the only way to fill the seats is to lower the prices. Who knows? By that time someone else might own the team. Dolan will have laughed his way to the bank and be long gone.

Yes, Crosby has skills and talent. What he lacks is sportsmanship and respect for his fellow players and the game. He stopped diving because everyone was on to his act. It was making the league look bad. Now all he has left is whining.

As much as I dislike Mike Milbury, his evaluation of Crosby, Malkin and the rest of the cheap shot artists on Pittsburgh was spot on. They are dirty players that have gotten away with the cheap stuff because the biggest piece of shit of all, Gary Bettman, has allowed it.

Too bad Milbury hasn’t got the balls to stand by his original opinion. I guess fear for his job at Versus/NBC/Whateverthehelltheyarecallingit Network made him apologize for what he said.  Mike’s got no balls. That’s why Torts and Laviolette are behind benches and Milbury is being bent over one by the League.

Torts has the biggest balls of all.  He’s got $50,000 worth of balls. That’s the amount of penalty money Tort’s has racked up for speaking the truth. He was right about the ice-tilting at the Winter Classic. Now he’s right again about that cheap piece of garbage Orpik deliberately trying to take out Derek Stepan knee on knee.

So, you go ahead NHL. Keep fining John Tortorella and Peter Laviolette and any one else who dares to call out the Poster Boy and the punks he plays with, especially his pantywaist coach Bylsma. Bylsma had to have Tony Granato fight his battles for him. I guess Mario doesn’t pay Bylsma enough to make him take the fine and stick up for himself.

If Bettman, Campbell, Shanahan and the officials are going to let this shit go on, they better be prepared to see Crosby get taken down. He’s one bad concussion away from never playing again. They are the ones putting a target on Crosby’s back. Braydon Shen only crosschecked Crosby. How long before someone clotheslines him, like Stevens did to Paul Kariya, and finishes the job?

The Rangers, Devils, Flyers and Islanders all are gunning for Crosby. It’s only a matter of  time before someone nails the Crosbitch. If I were Cindy, I’d STFU and clean up my act. It’s getting old. He’s putting a bounty on his own head.

If Crosby goes down, no one will be whining except fans in that armpit of the Universe, Pittsburgh and Crosby’s enabler, Gary Bettman.

Congratulations to all the players, the coaching staff and the front office on this glorious achievement. It is hard won and well deserved. Today is the time to enjoy the moment. They got it done. Now is not the time to nit pick.

Thank you, Rangers!

Sometimes, like John Adams in “1776″, I’m obnoxious and disliked.  It was Adams’ excuse for fobbing the writing of the Declaration of Independence off on Thomas Jefferson. Adams made no apologies for his vociferous calling out of King George and Parliament. Taxation without representation. I will make no apologies for calling out the Rangers when I see them phoning one in.

Ranger fans have always vocally shown their displeasure when the team takes a night off. Well they should. We are taxed high enough for the privilege of sitting in the Garden and watching this team. There have been more bad years then good. When they suck, we’ll boo. When a player turns in a lackluster/dumb/underachieving performance, the fans will call that player out.

The sign of a true champion is to keep up their battle level, regardless of who they are playing. Several times this season, the Rangers failed to do that. Last night was one of them. To add insult to injury, the Garden Faithful came into the building expecting to see their team clinch the Atlantic Division and the Eastern Conference Titles. The Rangers only needed one point to do so. An overtime loss would have sufficed.

But no. The Rangers only showed up to play for 30 minutes. The result was a disappointing loss to a  team the Rangers are well capable of beating. The Bruins wanted it more. Why didn’t the Rangers? Are these Rangers going to let that one elusive point separate them from adding two more banners to the rafters? That would be a damn shame.

It’s because of attitudes like this older gentlemen that the Rangers have gotten away with mediocrity over the years. The time for mediocrity is over. As Herb Brooks told his 1980 Olympic Team in Lake Placid:

New York Rangers, This Is Your Time!