History is History

Well, so much for the Rangers. Never blown a 3-1 series lead? Until last night, anyway. The Caps hadn't overcome a 3-1 deficit since 1988? Twenty-one years is just too long.

Anyway, not that I had much faith going into last night's game, but I came away even more disheartened. The Rangers played their hearts out for two periods and had exactly one goal and a tie score to show for it. It was only a matter of time until the Caps finally scored again and the Rangers -- all one shot's worth -- were utterly powerless to fight back.

Which brings me to this point: why does Glen Sather still have a job? I'm beginning to think that having Gretzky and Messier and Lowe and Coffey all on one team made Sather look good. Really good. Like Phil Jackson coaching Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen good. (Or Shaq and Kobe good -- take your pick.)

My point is that if you overlook the Edmonton portion of Sather's résumé for a moment, the results aren't all that pretty. After all, the Rangers missed the playoffs in his first four seasons as GM. Even now, with four straight playoff appearances, they've never finished the regular season better than 3rd in the division and haven't made it out of the playoffs' 2nd round. (The Rangers have a 14-17 playoff record during Sather's reign.)

The bottom line now is that the Rangers simply can't score. As great as Lundquist played in this series, without a margin for error, the team was doomed. Sather has left the team without a guy who can put the puck in the net. And I'm not talking an Ovechkin, here. There are four Capitals with more points than the Rangers' leading scorer, Nik Antropov. (Full disclosure: not only is Antropov only the 65th-best scorer in the NHL, but he tallied 43 of his 59 points for Toronto.)

And the big-money guys like Gomez and Drury can take their place alongside such high-priced, underperforming talents as Lindros, Bure and Holik who were never able to put the Rangers over the top. How long can a man live off his past success and not be held accountable for the present? If Sather can't produce that scoring threat for next season, the Rangers should begin their own search for a new leader.

O Ye of Little Faith

Okay, I admit it: that's me. After watching the Rangers get blown out of the Garden on Sunday (well, for as long as I could stand watching it, anyway) my hopes are not particularly high for tonight's Game 7. It should be noted that even in the Rangers' wins it was by the slimmest of margins, whereas the Capitals have had their way with the Rangers during their three wins. (In fact, if you'd only watched the Caps' wins, you'd wonder -- and rightfully so -- how it was the Rangers were even still in this series.)

However, I'm always a sucker for historical stats, especially the ones that favor the Rangers. To wit:

• Of the 233 teams that have built 3-1 series leads in the Stanley Cup playoffs, 213 have ultimately won the series. That's good for 91%.
• No NHL team has overcome a 3-1 deficit since 2004, when Montreal beat Boston in the first round.
• It has been 21 years since the Capitals overcame a 3-1 series deficit -- 1988 against Philadelphia in the first round.
  
• The Rangers have never blown a 3-1 series lead, though they needed a Game 7 in the 1994 Stanley Cup finals against Vancouver.

Okay, so there you have it. History favors the Rangers. (Let's just not talk about the on-ice matchups...)

Sometimes Nice Guys Finish First

Congratulations, Adam. That's a fine group of men standing there. You deserve your place among them.

That's one for the books!

Rangers take the Devils, 4 games to 1.
And now on to Round Two...

Not So Cranky Today

It's hard to be cranky all the time, even for the Sports Crank. Baseball season is underway, the NCAA tournament is almost over, and the Rangers clinched a playoff berth last night by sweeping the ice with the Islanders.


And they get to do it again tonight at the Garden.

Canadian Philosophical Question

If an NHL All-Star game falls in the forest but nobody watches it, does it make a sound?

Though I am not, nor have I ever claimed to be, an "NHL fanatic", I've seen my fair share of games. Sure, I more or less stopped watching after Messier left, Gretzky retired, and the Rangers franchise slid into an unwatchable funk. But over the past few years, the NHL has made the occasional blip on my radar screen.

So while I'm not NHL Fan #1, it was with some surprise that I learned last evening that the NHL was, in fact, holding their annual All-Star game. (Don't ask me where -- I never got that far.) It was about 8:00 when I clicked on SI.com and read the headline, "East Leads West 5-3". My first reaction was, "East who?" so I clicked on the link for the story.

Though I'm sure there were those who did know, the fact that a casual fan like me didn't know the game was this weekend speaks volumes about the problems the current NHL faces. Worse yet, was what happened next.

Eager to watch the third period of action in what was a close game, I turned on TV and tuned into NBC. I figured since NBC had partnered with the NHL on the New Year's Day game, they would be the logical outlet for the All-Star game. Nope. Okay, how about ABC? I recall they carried hockey at some point. Wrong again. What about FOX? Not since the glowing puck, apparently. No EPSN or ESPN2, and now I'm at a total loss. Buzz the program guide.

After what seemed like an eternity, I finally located the game: on Versus, channel 146 on my cable system. And to sprinkle in a little more bad luck, it was smack dab in the middle of intermission, so instead of slap shots and glove saves, I was treated to the R&B stylings of Ne-Yo at center ice. (Because when you think hockey, you think Ne-Yo, don't yo'?) This, unfortunately, held zero interest for me so I turned the channel and never returned.

This whole situation perplexed me. How can a league so desperate for publicity, so desperate to recruit new fans to the game, leave the casual fan in the dark that an All-Star game was taking place? And at the same time compound the problem by relegating their most fan-friendly event to a second-tier outpost on the edge of space?

Yes, I know, the NHL has to practically pay to get its product on the air. So why not? NBC got great ratings (relatively speaking) for the Outdoor Classic on New Year's Day so the onus was on the NHL to make their case. The timing was perfect, with the NFL's off-weekend and continuing Writer's Strike rendering the broadcast landscape wide-open. Joe-Fan, looking for something to satiate his sporting appetite and bored with another Tiger runaway or a meaningless January NBA exercise, might stumble upon the most skilled players in the hockey world, plying their craft in an end-to-end, no-restrictions shoot-out, showcasing much of what the NHL has to offer in an easy-to-digest package. Instead, anyone lucky enough to find out about the game is reduced to a remote-controlled scavenger hunt.

Down the stretch, I'm sure I'll catch a few periods of Rangers' hockey as they make their push for the playoffs. And should they qualify, I'll probably tune in to see if they advance. But I just can't help but wonder how many other people like myself might be seeking out an NHL fix had they gotten a taste of what the NHL has to offer.