The Good: How good is Derek Stepan? You can just tell that the game has really slowed down for him. For all the crap he got in the beginning of the season being stuck on the fourth line, Stepan has really turned heads with his stellar play. Anisimov did set up both of the first two Ranger goals, first pressuring Gonchar into a turnover right to Stepan who quickly found Gaborik. On the Rangers second goal, Stepan forced rookie defenseman Rundblad into a terrible turnover behind the net, the puck found its way to a driving Anisimov, and following a save by Anderson, left a rebound right in front of the net for Stepan to bury. The third Ranger goal was all Gaborik. With Gaborik and Stepan coming down ice on a 2 on 1, a flatfooted Rundblad chose to play the pass instead of stepping up to the man with the puck and Gaborik made him pay. Also, Anderson was cheating a little too much towards Stepan and left the entire short side of the net open.
The Bad: Not a great start to the first period outshot at one point 8-1 and had just 4 shots on goal total through roughly 28 minutes of the game, although the Rangers should be used to that early this season. On Ottawa's first goal, there needed to be more bodies backchecking for the Rangers as the Sens had four guys at or below the dots to the Rangers two with Callahan coming back very late. On the Sens second goal, the puck takes an unlucky bounce over Woywitka's stick at the Ranger blue line where Da Costa picks up the puck and finds a rushing Foligno for a goal. Rangers need to be better in the faceoff circle too.
The Ugly: The Rangers are on a 5 game winning streak, so its awfully hard to complain about the wins. I think it may be time to break up Dubinsky and Callahan and perhaps try Dubinsky with Gaborik and Stepan at some point to get him going. Torts did demote Dubinsky to the Prust and Boyle line towards the end of the second period and obviously that's not going to help.
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