Blue Notes

Post-game musings from the empty Igloo.

You'd think the Rangers would have learned by now, 20 games into the season.

Time to sit some laggards. Ozo needs a breather. So do Hall and Orr. How about Kaspar on D and Pock up front and somebody from Hartford who will come to play every night?

A dozen penalties, many just dumb and dumber, and a 3-1 loss to a team that played the night before.

You know that new Penguin animated movie called "Happy Feet"?

The Rangers had unhappy feet and few smarts. Two delay-of-game penalties; one for too many men on the ice.
A bewilderingly no-shot offense that is official in a drought with six goals in four games and three came in 90 seconds against the Devils.

Jagr's poinless line seemed disinterested. The one glimmer of light: Fedor Tyutin has really stepped up his game.

But listen for yourself. These are post-game locker room quotes.

"We didn't get any shots off the rush to speak of, we didn't drive the net, which is so fundamental to the game," said Rangers coach Tom Renney, who suggested he might make some lineup changes tonight when Tampa Bay visits the Garden. "We have a tendency to want to make (passes) into the net. It's so fundamental, it's scary. I can't camouflage this effort by suggesting that the power play let us down. We let ourselves down from top to bottom."

"We shot ourselves in the foot," said Shanahan, bemoaning the 12 Rangers penalties. "The will was there, but execution wasn't. Everything they got tonight, we gave them. The power play gets their good players into the game without them working that hard. Consistently throughout the game we just kept taking penalties. There were moments when you thought we were gonna build something and we were back in the box."

The penalty-killers stopped nine of eleven power plays, but Shanahan said "our power play (0-for-6) wasn't very good either." No kidding.

"It's frustrating," said Lundqvist, who finished with 22 saves. "A couple of penalties pretty much made the difference. It's very tough defending the 5-on-3."

The Rangers launched 13 of their 24 shots in the third period, as the N. 1 Jagr-Michael Nylander-Martin Straka line wasn't very effective, with only two shots in the first period and eight overall. "Average", according to Renney. "They had a lot of power plays," explained Jagr, "The consistency's not there."

Duh.