State of the Rangers: October Edition

I'm introducing a new segment on the Just Blueshirts blog called 'State of the Rangers' a once a month piece where I basically will just post my thoughts and musings on important subjects around the Rangers.

The Rangers long winding road trip covering tens of thousands of miles, spanning across 6 countries and crossing the Atlantic Ocean twice came to an end when the Rangers plane landed back in NYC from Winnipeg early Tuesday morning. The Rangers somehow won 3 out of 4 on their western Canada trip despite being outplayed for long stretches and horrendously outshot by their opponents. Again I can't imagine how tired this team must be following all that traveling, moving in and out of hotels, trips to the airport, etc. Now that the Rangers are going to be playing at MSG for the next two weeks, I think we as Ranger fans are going to find out alot about the identity of this team coming up.

The Rangers were fortunate to get out out of Canada getting 6 out of a possible 8 points which is better than even the most optimistic fan could have hoped for. Lundqvist, in my opinion played the best game of his career against a tough team in Vancouver leading the Rangers to a 4-0 victory. What followed was 3 very ugly games in Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg which the Rangers were lucky to escape with 2 wins. Now that the team is home I have a hunch that we are going to quickly find out how good this Ranger team is.

Notably with Mark Staal still out with post concussion symptoms, which by the way I'm not going to panic over just yet, the Rangers have been forced to start rookie Tim Erixon, who had intended to start the season in the minors, receive top 4 minutes in the NHL. As common place as well around the Rangers, the trade winds have been swirling around. The Rangers do have several attracting pieces on the team that could be traded, but at the moment the real piece that fans have traded 30 times over is Mats Zuccarello. Poor Zucc never had a real chance to earn top 6 minutes on the Rangers and was constantly shuffled around unable to properly develop chemistry with anyone and found himself on the third and fourth lines more often than not.

Looking Forward
Now is the time the Rangers now need to find their game, re-establish their identity and become less reliant on Henrik Lundqvist bailing them out every night. The Rangers are ranked tied 29th in the league with an average of 2 goals for a game and that needs to improve. The second line needs to wake up and start producing and to take the scoring pressure off of Richards and Gaborik. The power play needs to be more consistent and the 2 power play goals in Winnipeg on Monday night was a start. The Rangers could be getting Michael Sauer back for the home opener Thursday and that will be huge for a heavily penalized team like the Rangers although that aspect of their game is slowly improving as well. The Rangers next 6 games are all at the Garden and getting at least 8 points is critical.