Jason Spezza – Keefe To The City

Feb 22, 2013

New York Rangers Hockey: ‘Grab Points When We Can’

John Tortorella was the most pissed off he’s been all season after Thursday’s 3-2 shootout loss in Ottawa.

You would think you could tell how pissed off John Tortorella is by how short and snippy his answers are, but that’s only part of the equation. To really tell how pissed off Tortorella is just listen to how many names of reporters he drops in his answers following a loss. On Thursday night in Ottawa, he used “Sam” for Sam Rosen of MSG, “Pat” for Pat Leonard of the Daily News and “Zip” for Steve Zipay of Newsday. It was the most pissed off Tortorella has been all season.

Keeping with tradition, here is the analysis of John Tortorella’s postgame press conference from Thursday night’s 3-2 shootout loss to the Senators.

On what areas he sees improvement.

“Oh, Sam I’m not going to go over areas and all that. I’m glad we got a point. I still don’t think our full lineup is playing, so we just got to keep grinding away until we get people playing and try to grab points when we can.”

Aww, poor John Tortorella and the Rangers. They don’t have their full team! They don’t have all of their best players! They don’t have their complete roster! Paul MacLean’s Senators just lost their Norris Trophy-winning defenseman for the season with a torn Achilles and overcame a late third-period deficit with their backup goalie after their starter sprained his ankle and still beat the Rangers. And Jason Spezza has only played five games (and has five points) due to injury. I didn’t hear Paul MacLean crying about his team’s injuries after Thursday’s game.

No one is going to feel bad for the Rangers and no one should feel bad for them. Yes, it sucks that Rick Nash has missed two straight games and will miss his third on Saturday, but part of being a good team is having depth and the Rangers don’t have much of it even when they are at full strength. Some people want to blame the lack of depth on the Nash deal that saw Brandon Dubinsky and Artem Anismov get shipped to Columbus, but if you want two dimes for a quarter then I can’t help you.

If the Yankees used “Heroes remembered, legends born” last season and are going with “A Timeless Legacy” in 2013, well John Tortorella gave us the 2012-13 Rangers’ slogan: “Grab points when we can.” Because when the lockout ended, coming off an Eastern Conference Finals appearance and with the addition of Rick Nash, “Grab points when we can” was exactly how I thought this season would play out. I was terribly mistaken to think that the number 1 seed a year ago could possibly keep up their level of play. Stupid me. So eff it! “Grab points when we can!” Let’s go Rangers!

On whether or not he sees the power play getting more consistent.

“I thought the past couple of games it’s been OK. We scored a big goal tonight. We still … we don’t have enough guys playing. We don’t. But we get a point, so we just gotta keep trying to grind way and get points until we have our full team playing here.”

Here are the facts aside from the most telling stat the the Rangers are 4-for-31 on the power play in February and last in the league on the power play on the year.

1. Rick Nash didn’t play on Thursday night.

2. Of Rick Nash’s 292 career goals, 83 (28 percent) of them have come on the power play. Of Rick Nash’s 267 career assists, 100 of them have come on the power play (37 percent).

3. Of Rick Nash’s 183 power-play points, one of them has come with the Rangers.

What does all of this tell us? Two things.

1. With Rick Nash in the lineup, the power play still sucks and Tortorella shouldn’t be blaming his absence on the special teams’ struggles.

2. The players Rick Nash plays with on the power play shouldn’t be on the power play.

How do we know this?

Rick Nash was a productive special teams player on the worst team in the league. He’s now supposedly playing with better players on the man advantage, but for some reason the power play isn’t scoring and it certainly isn’t because of him.

The power play needs new personnel. Michael Del Zotto doesn’t belong on the first unit and that needs to be the first change. Pierre McGuire told Mike Francesa that when Tortorella was an assistant coach he was a special teams expert, which only further complicates the situation since this should have been fixed by now.

(Everything else from Tortorella’s answer is the same as the first answer. Poor, Torts! He doesn’t have his best player! But his team has had the lead in their last three losses, but let’s not talk about that.)

On what was working on the line when Halpern jumped up with Callahan and Pyatt in the third.

“They forechecked. They had the puck.”

Can’t argue there.

On why he thought it was necessary to make that line change.

“Because we weren’t developing any offense, Pat.”

Fair enough.

On if he sympathizes a team that lost their number 1 goalie.

“Do I sympathize for what’s happened there? No, I … No.”

Then no one is going to sympathize with your injuries, so why keep bringing them up?

On if the play that injured Anderson was an accident.

“He was tripped. It was a goal too.”

OK.

On what happened with the quick whistle on Halpern’s waved-off goal.

“They said they must have lost site of the puck. I didn’t get an explanation. I don’t bother with that anymore.”

You don’t bother with should-have-been goals, but just said that Chris Kreider getting tripped into Craig Anderson should have been a goal. OK then…

On if Gaborik played better for the whole 60 minutes.

“Are you asking me a question or telling me, Zip? Ask me the question.”

“That line played well.”

If Gaborik’s line is the only line that plays well on Saturday night in Montreal, I’ll have a postgame press conference to analyze on Sunday.

The 2012-13 NHL All-Animosity Team

It’s the first ever NHL All-Animosity Team.

Last week during the third and last (well the last for now) Rangers-Bruins game, Milan Lucic took exception to the way the Ryan McDonagh plays hockey and decided he was going to try to prove that he’s tough. This wasn’t the first time the two had had sort of mixed it up since last March, Lucic didn’t like that McDonagh didn’t like that Lucic hit from behind. So Lucic, the owner of 30 penalty minutes in 2013 and 555 career penalty minutes (in 371 games) decided that McDonagh and his 66 career penalty minutes (in 136 games) was someone worth bullying.

But this is who Milan Lucic is. He’ll try to intimidate the guys that are in the league because they can play and every once in a while he will prove to those that are in the league even though they can’t play that he is in the league because he can. And it was this latest example of Lucic’s “toughness” that led me to create the first edition of the NHL All-Animosity Team the way I had for MLB.

Five years ago this list would have been a lot easier to make. Ten years ago, this list would have written itself. But in 2013, things are a little trickier. It actually took time to complete a defensive pair (and it’s not even a real defensive pair) for the team when in 2002-03 I would have had to make three separate weeks of cuts just to get it down to six or eight.

But to go along with the MLB All-Animosity Team, which will celebrate its fourth season this spring, here’s the first edition of the NHL All-Animosity Team. (Note: Brian Boyle wasn’t ineligible to make the team.)

FORWARDS

Milan Lucic
I’m not sure there’s anything left to be said about Lucic that wasn’t captured in the opening of this column. But if I could add anything to justify his placement on this team it would be his unnecessary running of Ryan Miller and that Boston fans so badly want him to be Cam Neely 2.0 and some are even crazy enough to think that he is. (FYI: He’s not and it’s not even close.) And there’s nothing worse than a Boston sports fan overrating their player’s talent and ability. (Hey, it’s Trot Nixon!) Also, according to Jack Edwards, Lucic still hasn’t lost a fight.

Matt Cooke
Show me someone outside of Pittsburgh that likes Matt Cooke and doesn’t have the last name Cooke and I will show you a liar. Cooke has become the unanimous number 1 choice as the most hated player in the league (though Raffi Torres really wants that spot), and had I not cared about this column flowing, I would have listed him first instead of Lucic.

Cooke has supposedly changed his dangerous ways and knack for hits and cheap shots that make you wonder what goes through someone’s mind right before they decide to go through with a hit like this.

But it’s not the hit from behind on Fedor Tyutin that I will always think of when I think of Matt Cooke. When I hear Cooke’s name I will always think of him starting the end of Marc Savard’s career with an elbow to the head, which he wasn’t suspended for. And while Cooke continues to play, Savard is left tweeting things like this one from Nov. 8 or this one from Dec. 17. No big deal.

Cooke has been suspended five times and four of those have come while with the Penguins. (If Colin Campbell had never been the league disciplinarian, that number could be doubled.) After being suspended for the remainder of the 2010-11 regular season and the first round of playoffs the year for elbowing Ryan McDonagh in the head, Cooke said, “I don’t want to hurt anybody. That’s not my intention. I know that I can be better.” At the time, no one believed him. I’m not sure if anyone does yet.

Alexander Ovechkin
You probably didn’t expect to see this name here. He’s the cleanest player of the group and a Top 3 talent in the world. But for me Ovechkin has been a problem as I have had to argue against him in what seemed like a never-ending Crosby vs. Ovechkin debate that has now ended with Crosby at the clearly better player.

Ovechkin has 15 goals and 14 assists in 29 regular season games against the Rangers and has been a key player in two first-round exits for the Rangers (2008-09 and 2010-11). On top of that, it seems like every time I get to see him in person he doesn’t do anything (which is both good and bad), including on Sunday night at the Garden and the first time I ever saw him play on Jan. 26, 2006 in Boston, he missed a shorthanded breakaway and then also failed to score on a penalty shot. Give me Crosby every day of the week.

DEFENSEMEN

Zdeno Chara
Jack Edwards will likely tell you that Chara is the best defenseman in the league, but he’s the same guy who thinks fights are decided by whichever plays ends up on top of the other player on the ice. Is there anything worse than when broadcasters talk about Chara’s 108-mph slap shot in the Skills Competition in a real game? No, there’s not. Because there are a lot of times in real games when you get to sprint untouched from the blue into a still puck in the slot and rip a bomb into an open net. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg that is the lovefest for the 6-foot-9, one-time Norris Trophy winner.

It’s tough to say that Chara won’t fight or fight frequently since there aren’t many willing opponents to go against his reach, but unlike Lucic, when Chara picks his spots, he picks them correctly, except when he intentionally tries to injure someone like Max Pacioretty (listen to Jack Edwards blame it on the geometry of the rink), which I wrote about after it happened. But it’s not tough to say that outside of being a massive body on the ice with the longest stick in the league, Chara’s game is overrated by everyone and anyone willing to form an opinion based on his name alone (except for maybe Mike Milbury who thought that Chara, Bill Muckalt and the pick that turned into Jason Spezza was worth Alexei Yashin). But Chara has always been good at standing in front of the net on the power play, which has always been good for a good laugh when rebounds appear at his feet.

Maxim Lapierre
I know Maxim Lapierre isn’t a defenseman, but here’s the thing: there are a lot more forwards in the league to hate than defensemen (probably because there are a lot more forwards in the league than defensemen), so for the sole purpose of not trying to fake hate someone for the sake of this team, I’m going to make a forward play defense for the sake of this team. And when you’re talking about Maxim Lapierre, it’s easy to bend the rules and make exceptions and change things to make sure he’s part of something that includes “Animosity” in the title.

It was hard to pick a Western Conference player since the Rangers play the Canucks once a year and won’t play them at all this year, but Lapierre’s antics go back to his time when he was in the Eastern Conference with the Canadiens. And any Bruins fan taking exception for Lucic and Chara making the team should forgive me for including the 2010-11 Final agitator.

I’m not sure which of the dozens of Lapierre cheap shot moments or examples to break down here, but I think this attempt to draw a penalty against fellow Animosity teammate Zdeno Chara proves his worth to this team. And on top of me breaking the rules and putting a forward on defense just to get him in the lineup, Lapierre is part of the first tier of the “Athletes I Hate To Look At” List, which is led by Josh Beckett. And I’m not the only one who thinks so since someone made a video of his many punchable faces from one game.

The problem with Lapierre is that even though he plays the game in a way that no one should play the game, he does it within the rules because the rules allow for players like him to run around without the fear of paying the price for their actions. But in order to fix that, the NHL would have to care about the game, its integrity and the fans, and there’s a better chance of me giving Nick Swisher a welcome applause when the Indians arrive in the Bronx this season than there is of the NHL caring about any of those things ever.

GOALIE

Martin Brodeur
Was there any other choice?

It’s simple: If you’re a Rangers fan, you don’t like Martin Brodeur. If you’re any other fan, you (most likely) like Martin Brodeur. (Unless you’re a fan of the Ten Commandments.)

Brodeur has been a part of the Rangers-Devils rivalry for 20 years now. Twenty! And when I watch highlights from the ’94 season (since those are all the memorable moments the Rangers have provided in the last 19 years) I can’t believe that he’s still the Devils goalie.

I have friends that try to discredit most of (and sometimes all of) Brodeur’s career by citing the depth and system Lou Lamoriello built around him, and I will agree that there is some truth to the situation he was put in in 1993-94 and the one he has played in since. But that’s sports and there’s no way of knowing if Brodeur would be the NHL’s all-time winningest goalie as part of another franchise or if the Devils would have three Cups if someone other than Brodeur had been their goalie.

In 2008-09 this theory looked real when career backup Scott Clemmensen went 25-13-1 for the Devils with a 2.39 goals against average and .917 save percentage. The theory looked even more real in 2010-11 when injuries to the core of the Devils forced Brodeur to be outstanding and he posted a career-low .903 save percentage and posted a sub-.500 record for the first time in his career (though age could obviously be cited as a factor). But then Brodeur had to go and record 31 wins in 59 games in 2011-12 and beat the Rangers along the way to his fifth Stanley Cup Final appearance at the age of 40 even if he didn’t look like the three-time Cup winner in the process.

Brodeur isn’t the same goalie in 2012-13 at 40 that he was in 2002-03 at 30 when he won his first of four Vezinas. But my animosity for him remains the same.

Digging for Gold

Team USA’s 5-3 win over Canada sent a message to the hockey world four years after the U.S. was embarrassed in the Olympics.

This column was originally published on WFAN.com on Feb. 22, 2010.

Mike Milbury predicted that Team USA would lose to Canada in Sunday night’s pregame show. At that point, I knew that an upset was assured because, let’s be honest, when has Mike Milbury ever been right?

It’s hard to remember Milbury ever having been right as general manager of the Islanders. He wasn’t right when he drafted Rick DiPietro ahead of Dany Heatley and Marian Gaborik, and traded Roberto Luongo. Or when he traded Zdeno Chara and the second pick in the 2001 draft (Jason Spezza) for Alexei Yashin. During his time with the Islanders, Milbury compiled a long list of questionable and controversial decisions in his quest to become the worst GM in hockey history. He was wrong again on Sunday night when he picked against his own country.

After letting a 1-4-1 performance in 2006 resonate for four years, Team USA made wholesale changes for 2010. General manager Brian Burke scrapped the entire ’06 roster except for Chris Drury and Brian Rafalski, choosing youth and inexperience to replace the face of USA hockey. Burke skirted conventional wisdom by replacing the team’s core of Mike Modano, Keith Tkachuk, Bill Guerin and Doug Weight. On Sunday night in Vancouver, Burke’s moves paid off in a game Eddie Olczyk referred to as “tremendously tremendous.”

Doc Emrick isn’t used to seeing Martin Brodeur get lit up, and he probably can’t recall a two-goal game from Brian Rafalski’s tenure with the Devils. These two factors — Brodeur’s shakiness and Rafalski’s offensive outburst — contributed to Team USA’s first win over Canada since 1960. Team USA entered Sunday’s main event at plus 250 on the money line. They left with all of Canada calling for Roberto Luongo to replace Brodeur in Tuesday’s quarterfinal qualifier.

Ron Wilson’s club won in exactly the manner that Burke envisioned they could when he selected the next wave of American talent. Burke built the current squad with an emphasis on speed and goaltending, and it was enough to drop a Canadian team that outshot the Americans 45-23. Team USA limited their mistakes, stayed disciplined and remained out of the box, and Ryan Miller did his best Jim Craig impersonation with a 42-save performance. Team USA was outplayed and outshot by a roster that perhaps no Americans other than Patrick Kane or Zach Parise would crack, but they stuck to Wilson’s system and capitalized on the few opportunities they were afforded.

The win was the most significant for Team USA in Olympic competition since the second Herb Brooks-led team knocked off Russia in the 2002 semifinals. The game created interest in the young club for the American people, and the winning result has turned that interest into an attachment. People now seem to care about the team’s outcome in Vancouver, and this wouldn’t have been the case had Ryan Miller played more like Martin Brodeur. The dream of achieving gold in the tournament for the first time in 30 years has hockey back in the spotlight, and it’s going to be a challenge to sustain the current hype around the team and the sport.

Gary Bettman would love for that enthusiasm to carry past the end of the week and into the stretch run of the NHL season, however, just keeping Americans attached for this week is a step in the right direction. It might be wishful thinking to believe that Team USA can bring the game back to where it was prior to the 2004-05 lockout, but it seems to be a possibility, at least for the moment. Team USA has a chance to change the landscape of hockey in the United States, and give the NHL the boost of interest the league has unsuccessfully tried to achieve through rules changes, marketing and the Winter Classic.

An upset of Canada and the revival of American hockey in the Olympics won’t carry as much weight if Team USA falls in quarterfinal action or loses to Canada in a possible rematch. Team USA knocked off the favorites on their home ice. They have proven they can play with — and beat — any team in the tournament, and in doing so, they have made the goal medal game their end game. If Sunday’s win was their last of the 2010 Games, this last week of perfect hockey from Team USA will be a letdown.

Many hoped that after the 2006 debacle, Team USA would contend for a medal game in the tournament, though no one truly expected them to beat Canada and earn the No. 1 seed for the playoff round. As long as the Americans didn’t bow out the way they did four years ago, it would have been a successful trip to Vancouver. The expectations changed on Sunday, and now it’s up to this Team USA to show America and the world that they aren’t the same team that won only once — against Kazakhstan, no less — in the ’06 Games. It’s up to them to prove to Sidney Crosby that Sunday’s 5-3 win wasn’t “just one game.”

A week ago Team USA was hoping to avoid embarrassment and provide a respectable showing in Vancouver. Now they are the top seed in the tournament and three wins away from achieving Olympic glory, and improving the outlook on the game for the entire country.

Let’s just hope Mike Milbury doesn’t decide to jump on the Team USA bandwagon.

Tag: Jason Spezza

New York Rangers Hockey: ‘Grab Points When We Can’

The 2012-13 NHL All-Animosity Team

Digging for Gold