Bobby Bevilacqua

Photo courtesy of MSG Photos.

When the Rangers fell apart against the Capitals on Sunday, a lot went wrong. The defensive coverage was bad, there were guys open in front of the net, the penalty kill was poor, and there were turnovers. I could go on and on. Needless to say, it was a bad performance from a Rangers team that had been playing much better, even in their losses.

Heading into yesterday’s game, I expected the Rangers to win against a pretty bad Vancouver team that was missing their best player (Henrik Sedin) and because they’ve been alternating wins and losses for a few weeks now. And although they ran into a red-hot Ryan Miller, who stood on his head all night long, they managed to get a win.

If you just looked at the box core, you wouldn’t realize that this was total and utter domination by the Rangers. At even strength, the Rangers led in shot attempts by a massive margin, finishing as a +35 on the night (70-35). They had 36 scoring chances and 17 high danger scoring chances. And they had 49 shots on goal, which isn’t including the six times that they hit the post in the game. If it wasn’t for Ryan Miller, and if they had a bit more luck, this could have easily been a 5+ goal night for New York. Read the rest of this entry →