Keefe To The City

Jan 15, 2015

Rangers-Bruins Brings Out War of Words Again

Tuesday night was about as bad as a game could be for Rangers. Coming off 12 wins in 13 games, five straight wins and a California sweep, the Rangers never got going against the Islanders

Tuesday night was about as bad as a game could be for Rangers. Coming off 12 wins in 13 games, five straight wins and a California sweep, the Rangers never got going against the Islanders and got embarrassed at home in a 3-0 loss as Henrik Lundqvist watched the third period from the bench. But there’s no time for the Rangers to worry or reflect on what happened against their New York rival because the Capitals keep winning and the Rangers need to make the most of their games in hand on the rest of the Metropolitan.

For the first time in over 10 months, the Rangers will play the Bruins on Thursday night in Boston just as the Bruins are riding a five-game winning streak and playing their best hockey of the year. Mike Miccoli, who covers the Bruins for The Hockey Writers and was also my freshman year of college roommate, joined me for an email exchange to talk about what has happened to the Bruins since their postseason loss to the Canadiens, the job security of Peter Chiarelli and Claude Julien, what’s happening in the Eastern Conference this season and the thinking of Boston sports fans.

Keefe: It’s the middle of January and the Rangers and Bruins are meeting for the first time this season. The NHL always gets things right! With the two teams finally meeting for the first time since March 2, 2014, it means we get to talk Rangers-Bruins.

I was ready for the demise of the Bruins on Jan. 4 after they had just dropped their third straight game in either overtime or the shootout and had lost four of their last five overall. Since then, the Bruins have won four straight and look to be back on track.

But even with the Bruins finding their game, this season hasn’t been as easy for them as the last four have been and judging by your highs and lows on Twitter, it’s getting to you.

Are you worried about the Bruins?

Miccoli: There are certain things that I look forward to in January: the annual AFC Championship game with the New England Patriots, the release of Dave Matthews Band’s summer tour dates and a pretty successful month for the Boston Bruins. Since Claude Julien became head coach, the Bruins have an average winning percentage of .591 in January. It’d be a much higher number too, if they didn’t go 3-9-2 in January of the 2009-10 season, but I’m still pretty sure that year never actually happened.

This season is no different. The Bruins don’t know what it’s like to play a game in 2015 and not pickup a point. They’re 4-0-2 in January, and as you said, have won four straight. It’s unfortunate that the Rangers are beginning to cool off just as they’re running into a Bruins team that is playing their best hockey of the season. The team is finally healthy and is beginning to play more like they won a high seed in the playoffs rather than a high draft pick in this year’s lottery. Plus, David Pastrnak is on fire. I wish you could be here in Boston and see the statue that’s being constructed of him right next to Bobby Orr’s. It’s going to be so big that it might knock down Halftime Pizza across the street. Nobody will miss it.

So to answer your question, no, I’m not worried about the Bruins. At least not right now.

Keefe: I have always thought the Bobby Orr statue was a letdown. The statue itself is great … it’s just small and in a terrible location. Here is arguably the greatest hockey player, the most talented human being to ever wear skates and he has this tiny statue on Causeway Street in the shadows of the ugly concrete disaster that is the TD Garden and across the street from what used to be T.G.I Friday’s where there is a Dunkin Donuts, a weird ticket store and some homeless people asking for change and doing drugs outside that sketchy liquor store. IT’S NUMBER FOUR, BOBBY ORR! SHOW THE MAN SOME RESPECT! Then again, I guess there really isn’t a place to put the statue around the Garden. What a weird, oddly-planned area. I wish they would put the T back above ground there, re-open Hooters where North Star or DJ’s or whatever bar is there now and give the area some character. Maybe the best spot for it would be down the street on Staniford Street outside of Domino’s where I still remember the number by heart from freshman year. 617-248-0100. I just typed that without googling it. Is that disgusting? Do you want to get a 5-5-5 with me and play MVP Baseball on PS2? Anyway, back to real life, where we aren’t 18 and our only responsibility is to go to class between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. and then take an elevator down eight floors to eat whatever we want.

I hope the Rangers aren’t cooling off. Sure, they were embarrassed by the Islanders on Tuesday night at home after embarrassing the state of California’s hockey teams, but they have still won 12 of 14 games and have played the least amount of games in the entire league and a few games in hand on all of the teams they are chasing. If they win those games in hand, they will be out of the miserable wild-card spot they are in now and back to not worrying about making the playoffs.

But when it comes to the Rangers, it’s always about worrying about making the playoffs up until the beginning of April. You have had the luxury of not worrying about that in the last few years, but the way the Atlantic is shaping up, you might have to worry about this year. Imagine, no playoffs for the Bruins? The people of Boston will have to watch baseball again!

Miccoli: Did we go to class? (Hi, Mom and Dad and Neil’s parents – we did go to class.)

Now that you’ve mentioned the 5-5-5 and ruined any semblance of an appetite that I’ll have for the rest of the day, I can tell you that the Bruins are going to make playoffs.

I mean, I think I will. If they don’t, say goodbye to Peter Chiarelli and a slew of other roster players. Since Charlie Jacobs was named CEO, replacing his father of course, he made it pretty clear that anything less than the postseason for the Bruins is a failure. It’s true, too. There’s no way that a team a season removed from winning the Presidents’ Trophy should be missing the playoffs. While they weren’t really replaced, Jarome Iginla, Johnny Boychuk and Shawn Thornton won’t sway a team’s trajectory that drastically.

Since Jacobs’ remarks, the Bruins have won four straight and have generally returned to form. Boston has been consistently inconsistent this season but for what it’s worth, I think that the team you’re seeing now is what you’ll see going forward.

The Rangers, on the other hand, won’t be a wild-card team either. You know how I feel about the Rangers, overrating them and everything, but I do agree that they’ve looked good and have proven that theory by beating good hockey clubs. The most recent 3-0 loss to the Islanders notwithstanding, the Rangers are a team who could very well surprise a lot of teams in the East. I’ve always thought Rick Nash was the most overrated player in the NHL, but this year he has been worth every cent for New York.

Keefe: Three years ago at this time, I spent all of January and February campaigning for the Rangers to trade for Rick Nash and I didn’t care what it took. Chris Kreider? Send him to Columbus. Brandon Dubinsky? I will pack his bags for him. Artem Anisimov? I will buy his plane ticket? Send them all and more and all the draft picks it will take. Unfortunately, the Rangers didn’t pull the trigger until five months later, in the middle of the summer, after they had been eliminated by the Devils in six games in the Eastern Conference finals.

My reasoning for trading for Nash was that the Rangers were one player short (a pure goal scorer short) of reaching and potentially winning the Cup and they couldn’t keep wasting years of Henrik Lundqvist’s prime by giving him a team around him that couldn’t win games without Lundqvist standing on his head. Once the lucky bounces stopped going the Rangers’ way, they were eliminated by the Devils because they didn’t have a player that could take over games with talent and not through bounces.

This year my Rick Nash campaign has finally be justified. He is on pace for a 53-goal season, which would be his personal best, and he hasn’t been mired by concussions (KNOCK ON ALL OF THE WOOD IN THE WORLD) the way he was the last two seasons. He has been the Rick Nash of old and the one I was willing to sacrifice the future of the team for before the 2011-12 trade deadline.

The thing about not having him in that 2011-12 season was that I knew that Rangers team could go far and didn’t know the next time they would get that far. Last season, of course, they went even farther and lost in the Final, and it got me thinking about how many things had to go their way to reach the Final and what would have needed to go their way to win it (not blowing two-goal leads and scoring in overtime in the future would be a good start). The Bruins have played in the Final in two of the last four seasons, but do you ever get nervous about the next time they could get back there?

Miccoli: Yes and no. I think that the East is always so wide open that one of maybe five teams every year have a fighting chance. I think it’s starting to turn a little bit this year with the way that the Islanders and Lightning have been playing, but for the most part, I consider the Bruins and Rangers right in that mix, too. I don’t know when the Bruins will get back to the Stanley Cup Final. I don’t think it’s going to be this season, but I think it probably should have been last season. In 2013-14, the Bruins went all-in and were eliminated prematurely by a team that they really never could beat, the Montreal Canadiens.

You see, I think there are certain teams that just know how to beat others. For the Bruins, it’s the Canadiens. Aside from circumstances where there are special variables (eg. Tim Thomas and Nathan Horton in 2011), one team will usually always get the better of the other. Even when the Canadiens weren’t very good a few years ago, they always gave the Bruins trouble. This pattern transcends hockey, too. The Patriots suck against the Jets. The Red Sox are generally mediocre against Yankees. Had the Bruins not faced the Canadiens last season, they would’ve won the Cup. I sincerely think that.

I think their inconsistencies and injuries this season really set them back. They probably weren’t going to run wild on the league again in 2014-15, but they were a sure bet to win the Atlantic Division and make a good run in the playoffs barring any run-ins with … you know. Because they’re a bit further back this far in, I don’t know if a Cup Final is likely. Regardless, the team is built around Tuukka Rask, Patrice Bergeron and Zdeno Chara for now. Within the next season or two, it’ll be Dougie Hamilton instead of Chara. Much like the Rangers were in 2011-12, the Bruins are missing that scoring touch. No one really knows who steps up. Don’t even get me going on the cap issues this team has that’s preventing them from tweaking the lineup.

Keefe: So I take it you aren’t a fan of the new playoff format instituted last season since it pretty much guarantees that the Bruins and Canadiens will meet a lot in the first round?

I think the craziest part about the Bruins still maintaining their success is their lack of scoring. Right now they have Brad Marchand with 12 goals and Patrice Bergeron with 10 as their leading scorers and then no one else in double digits. It’s not uncommon to have only a handful of guys in double digits at the halfway point of the season, but it’s uncommon to only have two when those two only have 22 goals combined and are the team’s best scorers.

It wasn’t too long ago that both Chiarelli and Julien were on the hot seat and close to being fired by the Bruins. And when you think about the fact that in the 2010-11 playoffs that the Bruins had to overcome a 2-0 hole to the Canadiens and then win a Game 7, win a Game 7 against the Lightning and then overcome a 2-0 hole to the Canucks and win another Game 7 all in the same postseason, those two were one lucky bounce from no longer being with the Bruins. At least Claude was.

Now it seems like they are both back on the hot seat. I’m not sure if it’s deserved, but they are. But people in Boston are insane and even more insane than people in New York. There were probably people calling for Julien’s job the season after winning the Cup, the way there were people writing and talking about the Red Sox’ roster for 2014 within a week of the team winning the most improbable championship in sports history. People are nuts and I think most of those people live in Boston.

Miccoli: The new playoff format is for the birds.

I don’t understand the Julien argument but you’re right, it’s definitely there. Boston is a “What have you done for me lately?” city and it’s pretty insufferable. Julien is a very good coach, albeit defensive-minded. I think there are certain quirks that bother some people but at the end of the day, he’s the right choice for the team going forward.

The Bruins aren’t able to take on much salary because they can’t move anyone due to so many players having NTC or NMC. And the one move they did make to start the season, trading Johnny Boychuk, ended up burning them pretty badly. With that in the back of his head, I think Chiarelli hesitant to make a move just for the sake of doing it. He’s been preaching patience for awhile and it has pissed off fans here because the team wasn’t winning.

They were right, too. The Bruins weren’t playing good hockey and seemed lifeless for a while, but that shouldn’t be all on Julien, it should be on the players. Like I said earlier, this might be the turning point but who knows. This team shouldn’t have regressed as much as they did so maybe this is Boston bouncing back. I get it and it’s reasonable to be upset over being a bubble team, but the fever pitch here really is at an all-time high.

Keefe: For someone who started this email exchange by saying they aren’t worried about the Bruins, you sound pretty worried about the Bruins. Well, maybe not worried, but you don’t seem confident.

About nine months ago, the Bruins were the best team in the Eastern Conferance and maybe the best tem in the entire league and the team to beat in the Eastern Conference playoffs. And now here we are with the general manager and head coach on the hot seat, one of their best defensemen playing for the Islanders because of salary-cap issues, their two leading scorers having 22 goals combined through 44 games and everyone in Boston freaking out about the team. I don’t think anyone saw this coming last spring when the Bruins when the Bruins had a 3-2 series lead over the Canadiens.

But like you also said, the Bruins shouldn’t have regressed as badly as they did through the first half of the season and maybe this is them turning it on. If not, at least you have the Patriots. My football season ended in October.

Miccoli: You’re right. Reading back and this is all over the place (much like the Bruins’ season – ha! Hilarious, Mike!).

I guess what I should say is that expectations have been adjusted for the team and since then, they’ve been fine. I’m trying to pinpoint the exact date when people started to realize that the Bruins might not be one of the NHL’s elite teams anymore. Could have been this offseason when Loui Eriksson was projected to be the first-line winger, or maybe when Chara and Krejci got hurt around the same time. I think the idea became more solidified when they traded away Boychuk for two second-round picks just before the season began.

The Bruins are still a good team, but until they start going on a tear, similar to what the Rangers did, they’re going to be questioned. I believe they’ll make the playoffs and maybe pull off an upset or two depending on who they face, but expectations should be altered. I think they’ll beat the Rangers on Thursday because they’re playing well and because Henrik Lundqvist and Derek Stepan aren’t on the ice. I can’t say much about the luck the Bruins have had with playing teams missing important players since they’ve on the opposite end of that for most of the season.

Are you even watching the game on Sunday? Have you converted to rooting for a team that’s actually good in consecutive years? Have you considered cutting the sleeves off of a hoodie?

Keefe: I will be watching the game on Sunday after thankfully missing the Patriots’ win over the Ravens, but I’m a Seahawks fan from here on out because they are the only team remaining that I feel confident about beating the Patriots.

When it comes to the Giants, well, let’s hope they are better than they were this year. And that goes for the Yankees too.

Let’s go Colts! And if they can’t do it … Let’s go Seahawks! or Let’s go Packers! The Super Bowl drought needs to reach 10 years.

Miccoli: The Make Way for Ducklings statues in the Public Garden are wearing “Do Your Job” cut-off Patriots hoodies for the game. I’ll never understand why you don’t enjoy adorable things. Come May, they might be wearing Bruins jerseys as the flowers bloom. That’s one of the best characteristics about this city – there’s always a team winning. I look forward to when I’m in my 40s and I have to tell my young children about these times to cheer them up when they’re rooting for teams who are so miserably bad.

Keefe: I look forward to that day because the run Boston has been on has lasted too long. Where are the 90s when you need them? Not only was it the best decade for music, TV and movies, but it was also dominated by the Yankees. I wish I could go back to that time. The 2000s haven’t been as fun.

Miccoli: The 90s were okay at best and vastly overrated much like the … ah, forget it. Good luck on Thursday night!

Podcasts • Rangers

Jan 15, 2015

Podcast: Brian McGonagle

The Rangers and Bruins haven’t played against each other since Ryan Callahan was the captain of the Rangers. So on Thursday night when the two teams meet in Boston, it will not only be the

The Rangers and Bruins haven’t played against each other since Ryan Callahan was the captain of the Rangers. So on Thursday night when the two teams meet in Boston, it will not only be the first game of the year between them, it will be the first game in the Martin St. Louis era and the first game since the Rangers became defending Eastern Conference champions, which is a title most thought the Bruins would have held for this season.

Brian McGonagle, who is also known as Rear Admiral, of Barstool Sports Boston joined me to talk about the good and bad that comes with rivalries, the NHL’s problem with the shootout and three-points games and how betting on hockey has changed since the 2004-05 lockout.

Blogs • Rangers

Jan 14, 2015

The Return of the Rangers-Islanders Rivalry

The Rangers and Islanders are finally back to being relevant and contenders in the same season for the first time in two decades.

That game was coming at some point. I just wish it hadn’t come on Tuesday night, at home, against the Islanders.

When you look at what the Rangers have done over the last five weeks, ripping off 12 wins in 13 games, by rolling through the Eastern Conference and embarrassing the Western Conference, “that game” was going to happen. You can only play so well for so long over the course of an 82-game season before it catches up with you, and the Rangers, having just come back from a three-game California road trip and having played one home game in the last 16 days, were set up to lay an egg in what had become the most hyped of their 40 games so far.

Games like Tuesday night are going to happen. If it had happened against the Penguins it wouldn’t have been a big deal. If it had happened against the Devils it would have been somewhat of a big deal. Because it happened against the Islanders, it’s a very big deal, but it’s good that it’s a very big deal. It’s good that losing to the Islanders in a mid-January game is a big deal. It’s good that Islanders fans have a reason to boast and chirp today and pretend like that last 20 years of hockey never happened.

When it comes to Islanders fans there are those that are finally showing their face after like Punxsutawney Phil on Feb. 2 after two decades of hiding and there are those that feel like their time watching missed postseasons and first round exits is now being vindicated, like someone who watched a band play in bars and clubs and now they’re touring stadiums and arenas. It’s a combination of both that will bust out the “Best Team in New York” tag over the next couple of weeks until the teams meet against on Jan. 27 even if holding that title in the regular season means as much as winning the Presidents Trophy and then not finishing the job in the playoffs. But I’m happy Islanders fans have a reason to celebrate like Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals was played last night.

Normally, Tuesday’s game would have meant nothing more than the end of the Rangers’ five-game winning streak, the continuation of the Islanders’ now three-game winning streak, no points for the Islanders and two points for the Rangers. And for the standings and playoff-seeding purposes, that’s all it does mean. But the extra stuff between the teams, the players and the fans, Tuesday’s game meant everything.

It’s exciting to have both the Rangers and Islanders be elite, top-tier teams in the Eastern Conference and potential Cup contenders at the same time. The last time you cold make the case for that was 1993-94 when I was seven years old. I like having this rivalry. I enjoy having this rivalry. But with every regular-season rivalry, whether it be Yankees-Red Sox, Yankees-Mets, Giants-Eagles or Giants-Cowboys, each game is treated like a Game 7 throughout the regular season. And because you’re presented with something resembling playoff hockey when it’s not really the playoffs, you treat the games as if they are playoff-like games and then it’s as if you’re a 15-year-old getting drunk off wine coolers because that’s the only way for you to get drunk. But during an 82-game regular season that spans over parts of seven months, you need regular-season games disguised as playoff games, and you need to have these rivalries and have Tuesday night games in January seem and feel like they are more important than a Tuesday night game in December, even if it’s the same two points on the line.

It’s the games against the Islanders and Devils and Flyers and Bruins and Penguins and Blackhawks and Kings that you look for when the schedule comes out. The only people looking for Rangers-Hurricanes and Rangers-Jets and Rangers-Panthers on the day the schedule is released are those looking to get to a game and see the Rangers at the Garden for cheap. We need games like Tuesday night. We need the Rangers and Islanders to be competitive and for their fans to hate each other. We need a reason for Game 40 to feel different than Game 27 or Game 63 and to give us a playoff atmosphere three months before the real thing. I could certainly do without the lackluster, half-hearted effort in an eventual 3-0 loss at home to the team’s current biggest rival, but I enjoyed everything surrounding the game until the puck dropped shortly after 7 p.m. I’m not enjoying the aftermath of the loss or the following day as much.

The Rangers are one game from the halfway point of the season (Columbus is the only other team will 40 games played), but following Thursday’s game in Boston, they will be done with the first half of their schedule. Right now, you can count how many times they have had “one of those games” on one hand: Oct. 14 vs. Islanders, Nov. 1 vs. Winnipeg, Nov. 9 vs. Edmonton, Nov. 17 vs. Tampa Bay and Tuesday night against the Islanders. I don’t want to have to start counting on two hands after Thursday.

Podcasts • Rangers

Jan 13, 2015

Podcast: Mike Carver

The Rangers-Islanders rivalry is officially back after nearly a 20-year hiatus with both teams being elite for the first time since the Rangers last won the Cup.

The last time the Rangers and Islanders met was on Oct. 14. Since then, the Rangers have gone 23-8-4 and the Islanders have gone 25-13-1. The Islanders are currently first in the Metropolitan Division and five points ahead of the Rangers, but the Rangers have three games in hand on their rival. In the next 34 days, the teams will meet three times, but the title for “Best Team in New York” that Islanders fans have somehow adopted won’t be decided until after Game 82.

Mike Carver of The Butch Goring Show on Hockey This Week Radio Network and WFAN joined me to talk about what it’s like to be an Islanders fan experiencing success after two decades of watching a bad team, why Rangers fans are scared of the idea of the teams meeting in the playoffs and what’s going to happen with the Islanders when they move to Brooklyn next season.

Blogs • Rangers

Jan 12, 2015

The Rangers’ California Dream

The Rangers weren’t supposed to go to California for three games and come back with their winning streak alive, but they did after sweeping the West Coast.

In the last 35 days, the Rangers have lost once. Once. An eight-game winning streak and a five-game winning streak sandwiched around a 3-2 loss in Dallas that wouldn’t have happened if Glen Sather didn’t give Tanner Glass a three-year, $4.35 million contract. After a slow and injury-plagued start to the season made me think we might not see the kind of run the Rangers went on last spring for another two decades, the Rangers got healthy, got hot and have turned the last five weeks into a demolition of the rest of the league.

Prior to the Rangers’ California road trip, their 10 wins in 11 games came against Pittsburgh, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Carolina (2), Washington, New Jersey, Florida and Buffalo. If the season ended today, only Pittsburgh, Vancouver and Washington would be playoff teams out of that list. So it made some sense that Rangers critics were skeptical of how good they had been because they beat up on the bad teams in the league (which is exactly what good teams do) even if they had outscored their opponents 40-17.

California was supposed to be the end of the Rangers’ best run in 20 years. Three games in four nights against the league’s best team points-wise, the defending champions and the team that has been predicted more to win the Cup than any other team in the last nine years was supposed to confirm for the critics that the 2014-15 Rangers aren’t ready to be considered elite or Cup contenders. But four days and six points later following their run against the Pacific Division, the Rangers are both of those things.

Let’s look back at a memorable weekend, in which the Rangers went 3-0 against the Ducks, Kings and Sharks and outscored them 11-5.

ANAHEIM
The hype that usually surrounds the Sharks, also surrounds the Ducks, but because the Ducks won the Cup in 2006-07, they have been less of a disappointment than their two-year-older division rival. Over the last seven seasons since their Cup run, the Ducks have yet to return to the Western Conference finals and have lost all three Game 7s they have been in. However, this season, the Ducks have played like the best team in the league over the first half of the season despite the assumption that the Western Conference finals will once again include the Kings and Blackhawks.

Going into the California road trip, I figured the Rangers would likely leave the West Coast with two points. They had won 10 of 11 and when they met the Ducks on Wednesday night, it would have been 10 days since the Rangers’ last home game. (From Dec. 29 to Jan. 18 the Rangers will play 10 games and just two of those will have been home.) At some point, the travel would catch up with the team near the halfway point of the season, so this felt like the time it would happen.

After getting out of the first period tied 0-0 in Anaheim, it felt like a minor victory. The Rangers had outshot the Ducks 11-8 in the first, but with the Rangers having traveled and the Ducks in the middle of an eight-game homestand, I expected a different start to the game and figured we would watch an opening 20 minutes of dominance from the home team.

The Rangers went up 1-0 after two and eventually took a 2-0 at 2:32 of the third and I figured that with over 17 minutes left to play, at some point we would see the league’s leading team in points show how they compiled those points with incredible play at the Honda Center. It never happened. Sure, I was worried when Francois Beauchemin cut the lead to one before Mats Zuccarello and Dominic Moore put the game out of reach, but I was never truly worried about the Rangers losing the game.

At the time, it was the Rangers’ biggest win of the season. They had gone cross country to face the best team (in the standings) in the middle of a lengthy homestand and beat them offensively and defensively, and of course in goal. And that’s been the most refreshing part about what the Rangers have become: they can beat you more than just in goal. Since the lockout, the Rangers have relied on Henrik Lundqvist to win games for them because more often than not their scoring hasn’t been able to. That’s no longer the case and even with Lundqvist being near-perfect on the first night of the trip, he didn’t have to be.

LOS ANGELES
I didn’t agree with Alain Vigneault’s decision to play Cam Talbot against the Kings. Lundqvist had won 10 of his last 11 starts, giving up more than two goals just twice, and had played just once in the last four days even if that one game happened to have been the night before. And 5:49 into the game when the Kings took a 2-0 lead on the softest of goals allowed by Talbot, I had a few choice words for my TV directed Vigneault. Why wouldn’t you play Lundqvist against the better Kings rather than the Sharks? Let Talbot play in San Jose and then Lundqvist has Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday off before playing the Islanders on Tuesday night. But Talbot settled down and only gave up one more goal over the remaining 54:11 of the game, another one to Williams.

After what happened last June in Games 1 and 2 of the Stanley Cup Final, this time it was the Kings blowing a two-goal lead even if it came on much lesser scale in a much less important game. Four unanswered goals from the Rangers (two power-play goals), including three in the second period (two of which were 19 seconds apart) and the Rangers had done to the Kings what they had done to them seven months ago. It didn’t avenge what happened on that same ice on June 4 and 7, but it did make me smile and made me realize that this Rangers team can get back to where last year’s team went. It made me realize that this Rangers team is better than last year’s team.

I can’t remember a time feeling confident that the Rangers could win any game. East Coast or West Coast, home or away on back-to-back nights or after a five-day layoff, the Rangers can be expected to win every game against any opponent. I have never had this feeling about them before and the only downfall of this amazing five-plus week run that started on Dec. 8 is that I wish the playoffs started today and not three months from now.

SAN JOSE
I was at a dinner on Saturday (that thankfully lasted the entire Patriots-Ravens game so I didn’t have to watch that debacle), which eventually led to going to a bar while the Rangers-Sharks game started. After what the Rangers had been through over the last 12 games and what they had been through in just the last two in Southern California, when I spotted the game on at the bar and went to look at the score, I expected them to be winning. Let me repeat that: When I checked the score of a Rangers-Sharks game being played in San Jose, I expected the Rangers to be winning.

Last season, the Rangers were embarrassed with a 9-2 loss in San Jose in the third game of the season, a game in which the Rangers would also lose Rick Nash for 17 games thanks to a concussion. When the two teams met again on March 16 at MSG with the Rangers battling for playoff position down the stretch, the Rangers lost again, this time 1-0.

But there I was expecting to see the Rangers winning a game in San Jose, their third game in four nights in California, and they were. It was 2-0 Rangers when I looked at the score near the end of the first period and I wasn’t the least bit surprised. Winning on the road against the Western Conference is now something that has become expected, even if having expectations when it comes to the Rangers is a dangerous game. And not only winning on the road, but winning period is now expected from this team a season after they reached the Stanley Cup Final.

Nothing has ever come easy for the Rangers or their fans though getting two points each game for the last five weeks has felt pretty easy and because of how easy it’s been, it feels weird. Now that the California sweep is complete, the Rangers are back home and back on the East Coast to face the Islanders and Bruins and things aren’t likely to stay this easy, but I wish they would.