Today is Jean Ratelle's 85th birthday. Ratelle centered a line with Rod Gilbert and Vic Hadfield. The line was known as the GAG line or goal a game. They led the Rangers to the Stanley Cup finals in 1972, but lost to the Bobby Orr led Boston Bruins.

Nice recognition. :) GAG line is legendary.

Tuesday, it begins

Pens at the Rangers. Should be interesting to see, Mike Sullivan coaching against his old team. And the Pens have a coach who used to be a Rangers assistant coach.

Well that sucked.

The Rangers looked slow, Pens had some jump. Both goalies played well, but the Rangers made one mistake that cost them a goal that held up.

Things looked better last night. It was only Buffalo though.

Still and all, I'm confident if Shesty can maintain a .985 the Rangers will contend 😆

Maintain a .985??? Holy crapola Vic, get back on your meds you're delusional.

LOL I'd be thrilled with a .920, for sure

All 32 teams play today, big day

Anything above 9 would work.

That was a good'un. Everyone on the score sheet.

Vic, your Rangers have lost 3 home games all via shutout.

First team in NHL history to get shutout first 3 at home, pretty crazy. They strongly carried play in the last two as well. Even crazier, they have outscored the opposition 10-1 on the road.

They'd better figure out the home cooking or it's going to be a long season.

Well Vic’s Rangers lost another home game, but at least they scored a goal. Wild 3 Rangers 1.

How can they be so bad at home specifically? This is crazy.

Another home loss Vic, this time to the lowly Sharks, the Sharks.

That was ugly, and embarrassing. Bench the vets, play the kids.

With his 5 point outing against muh boys last week, Macklin Celebrini became the 4th teenager ever with 2 (TWO!) five point games in the NHL. The others are Gretzky, Dale Hawerchuck, and Bryan Trottier. Quite a list.

Also, Connor Bedard finally got his first NHL hat trick. His shot is freaking sick, but on the second goal in this game he displayed some stick handling and "shrug it off" ability as a puck carrier that I haven't seen much of.

It's good to see the two presumed future faces of the league starting to look like they'll be as good as advertised.

It's infuriating that all the other teams can have nice things with their 1OA draft pick.

Pesky Rangers.

Vic, your Rangers are 0-5-1 at home. Sullivan says you need more net front presence. Meanwhile Chris Kreider seems to be doing well with the Ducks. I think it’s going to take more than the Breadman shaving his head to turn things around.

Man, Kreids was my*guy* I love that dude. I was never in favor of that trade.

But yeah, best road record, worst home record. One of them is an illusion. I'm afraid it's the road record.

Islanders 5 Rangers 0 shut out at home again. Rangers are now 0-6-1 at MSG.

How on Earth do you managed to get shutout 5x in 7 home games?

Don't look now, but the Rangers have a win streak, Breadman is on fire, Lafreniere has 10 points in his last 10 games, and Cuylle has 9 in his last 10. Meanwhile, the defense continues to be strong, with 3 Ranger defensemen ranked in the league's top 6 for defense rating, per moneypuck.

The Winter Classic did not suck.

Many Ranger fans are clamoring to sell off everything and rooting for losses. I am old fashioned I guess, I always want my team to play well when I watch.

Zibanejad had the first ever hat trick in an outdoor NHL game, and also the first 5 point outdoor game.

I love wayne, dont get me wrong. But Bobby Orr is the greatest hockey player of all time.

And big Phil helped a lot.

Aren't you Canadian? You're repping a *Bruin* as the GOAT?

Also, WB!

And also fluff the fluffing Bruins. 10-2. oof. It's over, time to sell everything that isn't nailed down and get all the picks.

Orr redefined the role of a defenseman, he was a brilliant skater. Wayne is the greatest hockey player, but even he would tell that if Mario didn’t have his career shortened by back injuries and battling cancer, that he would have surpassed all of Wayne’s records.
As for Phil he scored mostly on rebounds.

Love the old bumper sticker

Jesus Saves... but Esposito gets the rebound, goes top shelf, AND SCORES

I was a kid in Chicago when Phil’s brother, Tony, played for the Blackhawks as a goalie. In 1971 Tony led the Hawks to the Cup final against Montreal. The Canadians were a formidable team with Frank and Peter Mohavolich and Henri Richard. The series came down to a game 7. It was played at the old Chicago stadium which didn’t have air conditioning and it was a warm April day. The Hawks took a 2-0 lead, but the Canadians battled back to tie. It was so warm in the stadium that steam was coming off the ice. Henri Richard took a shot which Tony Esposito lost in the “fog”. Montreal won the series and lifted the cup. The city of Chicago went into mourning.

Oh man, that's a hell of a memory. Before my time a bit. My earliest hockey memories are the '92 season, when the Rangers won the President's Trophy but got pasted by the Pens in the playoffs. I knew some player names before that and probably saw some games but that's the first year I was really a fan. So when the Rangers won in '94, I assumed we had a period incoming like what the Red Sox had after they broke their curse - a slew of Cups!

...we all know how that turned out.

Winning the President’s Trophy is the kiss of death. Rarely does the winner lift the Stanley Cup.

Vic, who had the hardest shot you’ve ever seen?

Al Iafrate, no hesitation. MacInnis probably second. You?

Bobby Hull, Iafrate and MacInnis second and third. They clocked Hull’s slapshot at 118 mph!
Hull was a compact bull of a man, he could skate like the wind and his shot was deadly. They asked Cheevers’ wife if she ever worried about her husband playing goal for Boston. She replied:”Only when Bobby Hull had the puck.”
One year Hull had his jaw broken, the doctors wired up his jaw and put on a Bears’ football helmet and when out and played.
Hull didn’t fight much, mainly because his opponents had more sense than to challenge him, but Brad Park challenged him once. Luckily for Park the linesman jumped in before Hull could unload on him.

Yeah, Bobby's a bit before my time. Sounds like Brett was built the same but Brett was feisty more than tough.

Speaking of old goalies, RIP Glenn Hall, one of the greats. His record is one of the 2-3 most unapproachable records in sports, with Walter Johnson's 119 complete game shutouts.

Zdeno Chara could let r rip

Very true, but he was 6 foot 9 inched!

Word is Panarin and his agent have been given permission to talk extension with potential trade partners, and they have been in touch with all the California teams. Him feeding Celebrini would be pretty sick. Or, driving a second impact line behind Celebrini. Either way I see the Sharks as having the highest upside from this trade of any teams outside of maybe Minnesota or Carolina.

What about the Ducks? Drury has already traded Kreider and Trouba to them, why not Panarin?

Latest is that the Ducks told the Rangers and Panarin that they are out. Might have been a good fit. 🤷‍♂️

Detroit would be a good fit if Bread Man got back on a line with Kane. Incidentally Vic, your Rangers goal differential sucks, -27 last time I checked. You’re not going to win many games with that kind of differential.

LOL they are in last place in the Eastern Conference, and Igor and Fox are still out. They had a good diff as recently as like 3 weeks ago but they've really nosedived since then.

NHL is back on action, things looked a little sluggish for a lot of teams the first two nights. The Rangers picked up right where they left off, with a come-from-ahead loss.

Your Rangers should have kept Muse, he's got the Pens rolling. Sullivan is a good coach, but he doesn't have much to work with.

Muse, or Knoblauch. Both were in the Rangers org, but the Rangers decided (like always) to go with the "safe" choice instead of taking a swing for the next phenom.

So how can the Rangers improve? According to an article in Blueshirt Banter they need to follow (gasp) the Penguins model. The Pens were picked before the season started to finish dead last in the Metro division. Their core was old and they had signed some jouny men and some kids to round out the roster. They fired Mike Sullivan, his system just wasn't working anymore and he had started to lose the room. They hired Dan Muse, who just happened to have been on the Ranger's staff. Muse brought in a different system that the players responded to. Geno Malkin looks like he's 25 again, Sidney Crosby continues to put up numbers and some of the players they signed and traded for are also chipping in, Anthony Mantha comes to mind. The youngsters have contributed also, and they can roll 4 lines all night. their fourth line is a pain to play against and they're chipping in offensively. Their defense is better than it was last year with Karlsson looking like the Eric of old. The only question mark they have seems to be goaltending, and even that has improved. Right now the Pens are cruisng along in second place in the Metro with 14 games to go until the playoffs.
The Rangers, on the other hand are dead last in the Metro with a bunch of question marks. Just two years ago they had won the President's trophy as the best team during the regular season, but since then they've traded Trouba, Kreider, Kakko, Chytil, and Panerin. And those are the ones I remember off the top of my head. Maybe Drury needs Mentoring by Dubas. Or new ownership.

New ownership would be the obvious #1 thing that would improve things. No more JD and the straight shot (google that phrase if you don't know).

Panarin may have been part of what was holding back the youth, with his horizontal slow play style. The top line of Zibanejad, Lafreniere, and Gabe Perreault has been cooking. The powerplay was too, when JT Miller was out. Miller came back, replaced Perrault on the PP - instantly the unit collapsed again.

Miller's been apparently hurt all year, I wish he would just sit out already.

Anyway, there's a path to being decent again pretty soon and it's 1) Keep getting more solid play from Mika/Laf/GP 2) Miller gets healthy and returns to form 3) Chmelar and Kartye aren't mirages right now and are actually decent middle 6ers. Robertson same for the defense. 4) Good trade value for one or more of the following in the offseason: Braden Schneider, Vincent Trochek, Will Cuylle. "Change of scenery/Hockey tade" type trades would be best for the fastest possible return to the playoffs, trades for futures better for a rebuild. 5) Hit on a solid young center in the draft. Not necessarily a superstar, but a guy you can pencil in for 10 years as 1C/2C. Like a Scheifele type, he was #7 in his draft, that would be ideal. Get some good AHL depth with the plethora of 2-4th round picks.

There's also the option of "Eff it, Igor's playing 75 games and putting up a .925" but I don't think that's actually going to happen.