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Tag: Rick Nash

Podcasts • Rangers

Mar 3, 2014

Podcast: Kevin DeLury

Kevin DeLury of The New York Rangers Blog joins me to talk about whether the Rangers should sign or trade Ryan Callahan and why Glen Sather is deciding to draw the line for the first time with his team’s captain.

The clock is ticking on Ryan Callahan and the Rangers. With Wednesday’s 3 p.m. deadline quickly approaching, I realize that at any moment I can open Twitter and see that the Rangers have signed Callahan to a six-year deal or that they have traded him, which would send a confusing message to the rest of the Rangers and the fans of the team. But after what has now been a month of trade rumors surrounding Callahan, we will soon have a resolution.

Kevin DeLury of The New York Rangers Blog joined me to talk about whether the Rangers should sign or trade Ryan Callahan, why Glen Sather is deciding to draw the line for the first time with his team’s captain and how far the Rangers can go this season.

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Podcasts • Rangers

Feb 25, 2014

Podcast: Brian Monzo

Brian Monzo of WFAN joins me to talk about the Ryan Callahan trade rumors and why trading the captain would be the most significant move of Glen Sather’s tenure.

The Olympics are over and the NHL is back. The Rangers begin their post-break season on Thursday night against Chicago at Madison Square and will play in Philadelphia on Saturday and then host Boston on Sunday for a very tough three games in four days. And with 23 games left in the Rangers’ season and just eight days until the trade deadline, it’s looking more likely that these will be Ryan Callahan’s final days as a Ranger.

WFAN Mike’s On: Francesa on the FAN producer Brian Monzo joined me to talk about the use of NHL players in the Olympics after some recent devastating injuries, the growing Ryan Callahan trade rumors and why trading the captain would be the most significant move of Glen Sather’s tenure.

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Blogs • Rangers

Feb 5, 2014

The Ryan Callahan Conundrum

By the time you read this, Ryan Callahan might no longer be a Ranger … or he might be one for the rest of his career.

If Ryan Callahan played for the Panthers or Sabres or Oilers or Flames, he would already be gone. But he doesn’t. He plays for the Rangers. If the Rangers were a last-place team looking at playing out the string after the Olympic break, this would be easier. But they aren’t. They are in second place in the Metro. If the only thing on Ryan Callahan’s jersey aside from “New York” or “Rangers” was the Number 24 then this wouldn’t be so hard. But they aren’t. He has the “C” on his jersey. If Ryan Callahan wasn’t an unrestricted free agent at the end of the year then this would have never gotten this far. But he is. And he is looking for a seven-year deal worth $42 million.

Ryan Callahan was drafted by the Rangers, groomed in Hartford and including this season, he’s spent eight years in New York and has given the organization everything he has had. But despite being the captain of the team and willingly offering every part of his body from his ankles to his face to block bombs from the point over the years, he is the first important and impending unrestricted free agent Glen Sather has decided to draw a line in the sand with.

Sather’s decision reminds me of the scene in Slap Shot when Ned Braden tells Tim McCracken, “Somebody’s gonna kill you, ya dumb son of a bitch, but it’s not gonna be me,” but instead Sather’s telling Callahan and his agent Steve Barlett, “Somebody’s gonna overpay for you, ya dumb son of a bitch, but it’s not gonna be me.” It’s just weird that Sather has finally decided to not overpay for someone when that someone is the captain of his playoff-bound team. After 14 years of overpaying for once-upon-a-time talent, of which most of the time was spent in an attempt to build a mid-to-late 90s All-Star team, Sather has now decided to put his foot down when it comes to the heart of the team (Henrik Lundqvist is the brain).

It would be easier to side with Sather if the Rangers were a playoff bubble team looking at making a run in three to four years rather than a win-now team built around a 31-year-old goalie and a 29-year-old scorer in their prime. And it would be easier to side with Sather if he hadn’t been so eager to overpay for free-agent talent in the past, but not take care of his own.

Ryan Callahan is making $4.825 million this season, but if he were to make $6 million, which would be the average annual salary of the deal he is looking for, he would be making as much as Taylor Hall, Jordan Staal, Tyler Myers and Tuukka Rask. Or in other words he would be making as much as a former No. 1 overall pick and face of the Oilers, an overpaid 20-goal scorer with a prominent last name, the face of the Sabres and one of the best goalies in the world. In comparison to Staal, he is worth $6 million a year through the 2020-21 season, but in comparison to the other three, he isn’t.

The situation is unique and complicated because of who Ryan Callahan is, what his status to the Rangers is, the Rangers’ window of opportunity, the team’s place in the standings, their cap situation, Callahan’s demands and his knowing his demands can be met on the open market. The entire dilemma can be categorized into three main reasons for Glen Sather to not want to extend (or re-sign) Callahan that all the other reasons stem from, so let’s look at those.

Seven Years, $42 Million Is Too Much for His Style
If Ryan Callahan gets the deal he wants, he will be 36 when it’s over at the end of the 2020-21 season. Since the start of the 2008-09 season, by season Callahan has missed 1, 5, 22, 6 and 3 games and so far this season he has missed 17 games. While it does seem that Callahan is always injured or out of the lineup, it’s really only been 2010-11 and this season that he has missed a substantial amount of regular-season games and the 2010-11 playoffs after Zdeno Chara broke his ankle with a slap shot at the end of the regular season. But his game is built around high-energy, end-to-end shifts in which he plays solid defense, mucks it up and sacrifices his body and over time (or seven years in this case), that style of play won’t hold up.

Callahan lacks finesse and hands and looks choppy with the puck, but he does always manage to get the job done when a scoring opportunity is presented (especially with shootout snipes) and he does have a goal-scorer’s touch (his first goal on Tuesday showed this) and the puck does seem to have a way of finding him and his tape in the slot (his second on Tuesday showed this). The problem is that players with that style of play aren’t those you want to need to produce in their mid-to-late 30s or want to commit a large portion of your payroll to. The other problem is the way Callahan finds the back of the net because when you’re unable to create your own scoring chances, it’s risky to rely on needing the puck to find your tape to get your goals.

His Trade Value Could Give the Rangers Depth and Help Avoid Salary Cap Issues
The Rangers aren’t the best team in the Eastern Conference or even the second-best team. Their overall game and effort is too inconsistent, their secondary scoring is too unreliable and their defense is too shaky to know which Rangers team will show up on a given night. But they are certainly a playoff team and with Henrik Lundqvist they are certainly a team that could make a lengthy playoff run this spring like they did in 2011-12. And it’s the vision of a lengthy playoff run more than anything why the Rangers need to keep Ryan Callahan. The only problem is if they keep him for the remainder of the season, they have to extend him or re-sign him because letting him leave via free agency and getting nothing in return following a Cup-less season would be a disaster.

I have always said that the Rangers can’t keeping wasting years of Henrik Lundqvist’s prime and Lundqvist is now 31 years old and in the heart of his prime. They wasted the 2011-12 season by not successfully trading for Rick Nash before the 2011 deadline and lost to the Devils in six games. They wasted last season by letting John Tortorella turn the entire team into shot-blocking pylons and by forcing a three-time 40-goal scorer out of New York and by benching a former Conn Smythe winner in the playoffs. The last thing they need is for me to add another sentence to this paragraph next year by saying this season was wasted when the Rangers traded away their captain, which destroyed the team and led to a first-round playoff exit (or worse).

The easy fix here would be if the NHL got rid of the salary cap today and the Rangers could meet Ryan Callahan’s unreasonable demands (yet also reasonable since he knows someone … cough, cough Buffalo … will meet them) and Sather could start writing ridiculous checks like he used to. But committing over nine percent of your payroll (the cap is $64.3 million this year though it’s expected to go up, which puts even more of a wrinkle into this dilemma) to a player of Callahan’s abilities right now isn’t the best move when it comes to finances or rational thinking. But since when is Sather worried about finances or being rational? When it comes to dealing with his team’s 28-year-old captain, that’s when.

He Doesn’t Fit Into Alain Vigneault’s System
If John Tortorella were the coach right now, Ryan Callahan would have likely already received his extension and it would have been close to the one he wants or would have been the one he wants. But John Tortorella is in Vancouver trying to get the Canucks into the playoffs and trying to avoid being suspended again for putting out a gongshow fire with gasoline. Alain Vigneault is the Rangers coach and after this year he has four years and $8 million remaining on his contract. Vigneault isn’t going anywhere … at least not today. And that’s all that matters right now since he isn’t the one facing a decision by either Friday at 3 p.m. or March 5 at 3 p.m.

I have no idea about the relationship between Callahan and Vigneault, but I do know that Callahan’s style of play doesn’t fit into Vigneault’s offense-first and open-ice system. Callahan lacks the speed, offensive talent and scoring ability to be a key part of what Vigneault is trying to build in New York and that’s part of the reason that before Tuesday’s win over Colorado, Callahan had just nine goals in 39 games. But after a sluggish 20-20-2 start to the season the “Vigneault is wrong for the Rangers” narrative has stopped thanks to an 11-3-1 record since Jan. 4 and a current season-high four-game win streak. And it’s hard to say that Vigneault’s system isn’t working and isn’t finally coming together since the Rangers have averaged 3.47 goals per game over the last month.

I’m torn on whether the right move is to extend or trade Ryan Callahan and really both sides of the debate are equal. The last time I remember being this indecisive about two equal choices was when I had to pick between binge-watching Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad to catch up in the spring of 2012 (I went with Game of Thrones and then eventually did Breaking Bad). You don’t want to overpay for a 20-plus goal scorer whose skills will likely diminish rapidly in his 30s, but you don’t want to trade your captain and vital piece of the team while in a win-now window for the franchise.

There’s a chance Ryan Callahan scored his last goal in Madison Square Garden as a Ranger and saluted the crowd as a member of the home team for the last time on Tuesday night. I hope it wasn’t the last time for either. Not because I want the Rangers to extend to Ryan Callahan, but because I don’t know that they should trade him. And if Tuesday night wasn’t the last time for either, it means I have more time to make up my mind.

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Blogs • Rangers

Jan 27, 2014

Rangers-Devils Stadium Series Thoughts: Mar-ty! Mar-ty! Mar-ty!

Everything about the first hockey game in the history of Yankee Stadium was perfect. Well, unless you’re Martin Brodeur or a Devils fan.

In an 82-game season, you need games like the Stadium Series to break up the monotony of the regular season. You want to have a playoff-like atmosphere at some point between October and early April to remind you of how amazing playoff hockey is and how important it is to be a part of it. You want a game to have the special feel and a seemingly added incentive to win even if the standard two points are on the line.

Sunday was special because it was one of two games on the Rangers’ schedule that stand out from the other 80. The novelty of outdoor NHL hockey isn’t being overexposed as some fans (like John McEnroe) believe with the Stadium Series and the Winter Classic and the Heritage Classic. Each outdoor game has presented it’s own unique element and those who have decided to complain about the increase in the games are likely the type of people who just need something to complain about.

Sunday was a perfect day in the Bronx for Rangers hockey and it might sound ridiculous, but if it were up to me, I would have the Rangers play a month of games at Yankee Stadium. OK, a week of games. OK, I will settle for one more.

– I loved how much the NBC broadcast team talked glowingly about Yankee Stadium. And I especially liked all the Yankees references that Doc Emrick threw into his call of the game including the one to open the game when going over the starting lineups at the opening faceoff:

“Mark Fayne, number 7, you see him at the right of your screen. He is the first home player to wear number 7 in Yankee Stadium since Mickey Mantle had that number retired in 1969.”

– Like the last time the Rangers played an outdoor game (2011-12 Winter Classic), it was the fourth line that kept the Rangers in the game and gave them a chance to win with the team’s first two goals of the game. Sure, the first one was a rebound as a result of Brodeur being interfered with by his own defenseman’s doing and the second one was a lucky bounce that trickled through his five-hole, but who cares? For at least one day, I can commend the fourth line’s work.

– Jaromir Jagr is ridiculous. The man is 41 years old, leads the Devils in scoring (16-28-44), is the active scoring leader in the NHL (697-1035-1732) and played the first period on Sunday as if it were 1993-94 and he were 21 years old. Jagr was the best player on the ice in the first period and looked like he might lead the Devils to a blowout win before the Devils defense and Brodeur fell apart. I wish Jagr would have had a second go-around with the Rangers.

– The Devils should think about changing back to the red and green color scheme over the red and black one. Or at least wear the red and green jerseys more often during the season. (Yes, this is my attempt to bring back the early-90s hockey that I grew up on.)

– What has happened to the Carcillo Effect? Carcillo was having a great shift forechecking in the first period, but when the Devils gained possession and broke it out, you could clearly see that he was tired and instead of changing, he coasted out of the Devils’ zone and then curled back toward the puck right before Ryan Clowe gave Patrik Elias a breakaway pass that led to the first goal of the game. It wasn’t “Car Bomb’s” finest moment, but his line did make up for it by scoring the Rangers’ first two goals. I never believed there was a Carcillo Effect and rather that he happened to join the team as they got hot (which coincides with Rick Nash and Henrik Lundqvist playing like Rick Nash and Henrik Lundqvist), but it would be nice if he did have some effect that was noticeable.

– The Devils’ second goal was a combination of Dan Girardi letting Jaromir Jagr continue toward the net with the puck without doing anything to slow him down, Dan Girardi not caring to look for someone to pick up (in this case it was Patrik Elias) after letting Jagr past him, Ryan McDonagh give a half-assed effort with a stick check on Jagr thinking that would be enough to take the puck from a man three goals away from 700 who is the best at protecting the puck in the world and then Henrik Lundqvist looking like a video game goalie when you accidentally switch to manual control. I think that sums up that disaster of a defensive breakdown.

– I didn’t tally how many junior hockey and college hockey references Pierre McGuire gave us on Sunday, but I did happen to notice this gem of a question for Peter DeBoer when Pierre went on the Devils bench in the first period: “I was really impressed with your practice yesterday. It looked like there was a rhyme and reason to it. What was the rhyme and reason?” If Pierre noticed there was a “rhyme and reason” to the Devils practiced (when I saw the Devils practice on MSG Network they were doing a shootout) then why would he need to ask DeBoer what it was?

– I’m not sure what Derick Brassard was doing when he decided to trip up Stephen Gionta at the Devils’ blue, which gave the Devils a power play, their third goal of the first and a 3-1 lead. Gionta entered the game with eight goals and 14 assists in 100 career games and wasn’t threatening to do anything during the play in which Brassard interfered with him. It was a brain fart and a dumb penalty to take and I can only hope that Brassard’s excuse was that he thought it was Brian Gionta.

– I was asked on Twitter why I went with “Ladies and gentlemen, Dan Girardi!” instead of “Ladies and gentlemen, Henrik Lundqvist!” when the Devils took a 3-1 lead. Is that a real question? It’s going to take a lot more than allowing three first-period goals, two of which Dan Girardi was on the ice for, for me to take shots at Hank. Lundqvist admitted in his postgame interview that he was in the middle of taking a nap because the Rangers had been told they had a long time until the delay would be over and that he wasn’t prepared and on his game in the first, but settled down after that. (He allowed no goals after the first). It was also reported that Marc Staal was eating pasta leading up to warmups since he was also under the impression the delay would last longer than expected. So if someone is eating pasta which isn’t highly recommended immediately before a game, then how can I get on Lundqvist for a sloppy 20 minutes? I can’t.

– The over/under in the game was 5. That total was matched in the first 16:59 of the game. With 10 total goals in the game, it was the most goals in a Rangers-Devils game since Dec. 12, 2008 when the Devils beat the Rangers 8-5. The Devils led 5-1 in that game, but blew their four-goal lead before winning. The Rangers’ goal scorers in that game were Markas Naslund, Nikolay Zherdev, Scott Gomez, Paul Mara and Ryan Callahan.

– I wish Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes played “I Don’t Want To Go Home.”

– On the Rangers’ fourth goal, which was produced by a 2-on-1 and a pass from Derick Brassard to Mats Zuccarello, it all started thanks to an awful pinch by Eric Gelinas, in which he accomplished nothing. Gelinas’ pinch looked like something that Girardi or Michael Del Zotto (has anyone missed him?) would do and I’m happy it happened, not only because the Rangers scored, but because it let me know that there are other teams that have defensemen that make equally as bad decisions as the Rangers defense does.

– The Rangers scored seven goals for the second time this year and the first line was only responsible for one of the goals as a unit (Rick Nash’s second-period goal) with Derek Stepan scoring on a penalty shot. It’s good to know that even if Nash, Stepan and Chris Kreider aren’t carrying the offensive load that the other lines will step up and serve as reliable secondary scoring options. Let’s just hope it wasn’t a one-time thing and the Rangers didn’t use up all their Stadium Series goals in the first of the two games.

– It’s only fitting that since Cory Schneider told the Devils coaching staff he would make their decision easier on who to start in the game by telling them that Martin Brodeur should start and have a chance to play in an outdoor game at Yankee Stadium. And it’s only fitting that Brodeur, being the class act he is, would return the favor and tell the coaching staff to let Schneider play the third period so he would have a chance to play in an outdoor game at Yankee Stadium. The decision to pull Brodeur had nothing to do with him allowing six goals on 21 shots in the first two periods with the Devils fighting to get into the playoff picture. Nothing at all.

The Devils’ season was over when they started 0-4-3 and won just once (beating the Rangers) in their first 10 games. Since then, they have battled back to within one point of the third spot in the Metropolitan Division. The Rangers helped the Devils save their season, but on Sunday, they ruined the Devils’ chance to really get back in it. A perfect day in the Bronx.

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Blogs • Email Exchanges • Rangers

Jan 16, 2014

Rangers-Red Wings Isn’t So Rare Anymore

The Red Wings are at Madison Square Garden for the first time in almost two years and that calls for an email exchange with “J.J. from Kansas” of Winging It In Motown.

It feels like Rangers-Red Wings never happens. That’s partially because it rarely has until now. The two teams met this season on Oct. 26, but thanks to the lockout last year, they didn’t meet at all in 2012-13 and just once a season prior to that. So when the two Original Six teams meet on Thursday night at Madison Square Garden, it will feel more important than a normal regular-season game and that’s because it kind of is. Thankfully with realignment, we will get more than just one Rangers-Red Wings game a year now.

With the Rangers and Red Wings playing for the second of three times this season, I did an email exchange with “J.J. from Kansas” of Winging It In Motown to talk about the Red Wings playing in the Eastern Conference, how they were portrayed in 24/7 leading up to the Winter Classic and what’s been going on with them over the last six weeks.

Keefe: After a long, long time as an Eastern Time Zone team playing in the Western Conference, the Red Wings are where they should be when it comes to alignment thanks to the realignment. The Red Wings might be out of place in the “Atlantic” division, but at least they are in the right place when it comes to traveling. (The Red Wings shouldn’t feel too awkward about playing in the “Atlantic” with Columbus and Carolina being considered “Metropolitan.”)

What were you feelings about the Red Wings’ move back to normality and playing in their own time zone when the plans were announced? And what do you think of the realignment now 46 games into the change?

J.J.: Being honest about the switch to the East, since I’m in the Central Time Zone, it wasn’t really a big deal to me, but I always liked the concept. I especially liked that the schedule-making would adjust to leave the Wings with only two trips out West where we’d have games starting at 10 p.m. EST or later. Ultimately I was happy that the travel schedule wouldn’t be as brutal for Detroit, but this never felt to me as the eventual correction of old wrongs like it has to much of the older generation of Wings fans who didn’t grow up with the Central Division.

This season has been a weird, bittersweet experience for me. I haven’t experienced the weird playoff quirks yet, but I do like the new realignment plan as far as it’s worked on the NHL regular season. The adjustment has come in how I watch games on off days for the Wings. I’ve always preferred to watch division rivals’ games and root for whichever outcome would most benefit the Wings. In doing that, I didn’t watch a ton of Eastern Conference hockey in the last few years and as a result, it’s almost been a culture shock for me readjusting to a bunch of uniforms, players, and styles I to which I haven’t grown accustomed (not to mention half a league’s worth of local announcers). In the West, I can still pick out which line is on the ice for teams based solely on how the forwards skate. I haven’t gotten used to that yet in the East save for a few of the very familiar or standout players (the Penguins, Rick Nash and Phil Kessel).

Keefe: There isn’t a bigger 24/7 fan than me and I hope that my dream of it being stretched into covering a team for a full season will one day be realized. (Kind of like what ESPN did with The Season and the Red Wings in 2002-03 and the Avalanche in 2003-04, only better.) Who wouldn’t want a full season of the show?

Two years ago when the Rangers and Flyers were the stars of 24/7 for their Winter Classic in Philadelphia, it made the show that much better having “my” team be covered in depth for a month. This year you had “your” team as one of the co-stars of the four-episode series. What did you think about how the Red Wings were portrayed?

J.J.: I’d LOVE to see a full season of 24/7 … centered around somebody else. I don’t know if I’m just looking for excuses or my dumb caveman brain is sliding a bit of causation into the correlation between the Red Wings being on 24/7 and the Red Wings playing like crap in the weeks where the HBO cameras were following them around, but it seemed that while the cameras were rolling, the Red Wings were just not comfortable.

Overall, I think HBO did the best they could with the Wings, but I’m caught between wanting to have seen much more and wanting to respect that they’re professional hockey players and stay away from their private lives. I would have loved to have seen more of Pavel Datsyuk, but he’s a private guy and if he doesn’t want to deal with the HBO cameras that much, then so be it.

Keefe: This season of the show gave me a better understanding of the Red Wings and there were three things I really took away from it (aside from disliking Dion Phaneuf more). The first was how strong of a presence Mike Babcock has with the team and the organization. I have long thought that Babcock is the best head coach in the league (and that’s likely why he is also the Team Canada coach), but my opinion was only reinforced with the show and the way he handles managing his team on and off the ice.

The second was how badly the Red Wings have been crushed by the injury bug over the first half of season. Sure, the Rangers lost their best two players in Rick Nash for 17 games in October and November and Henrik Lundqvist for a week in October, and you could throw Ryan Callahan in there too, who has also missed 17 games. But those injuries are nothing compared to what the Red Wings have endured. Seeing Babcock write and re-write and erase the names on his lines and depth chart whiteboard was remarkable and almost made me feel like he was managing the 2013 Yankees and their injury bug. I guess I know why the Red Wings are a point out of the playoff picture.

And the last thing would be the way Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg are perceived by the younger players on the team, almost as if the younger players haven’t grasped the idea that they are in the NHL and playing with Datsyuk and Zetterberg. The way the younger players glowingly talk about the duo and look up to them shows how the team has changed and turned over since the two entered the league 12 and 13 years ago.

J.J.: As the Wings have seemingly come farther away from Stanley Cup contention in the last few years, the fan base has grown a bit restless with Babcock. He’s never given the local writers much of a glimpse behind the scenes and has always done a great job dodging attempts to get the kind of glimpses that reporters could run with on a story. We’ve always had a bit of a sense as to when he was either taking blame or sending a message to the media about his players, but without the behind the scenes access from 24/7, all we really had was a picture of a cagey coach who favors veterans to youngsters without any real in-depth explanation. Seeing how he interacted with the team, especially the youngsters, has been a big positive for me this season.

As far as the injuries, I’m among the fans asking for an audit of the Red Wings’ procedures as far as training and conditioning goes. I know that the common joke is that the Red Wings are old, but the rate of injuries and the type that we’ve seen most common (groin) is just disconcerting.

I think personally that part of the younger players idolizing the core veterans was partially scripted to make up for the HBO cameras’ lack of access to Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg. Hank (our Hank), was featured in that segment where he’s skating on his pond, but that’s pretty much all you got from him. It is very clear that what earned Datsyuk and Zetterberg their way in the NHL was each of their work ethics (even the old guard guys like Steve Yzerman commented on it before they left) so if the youngsters look up to them that much, it’s just the personnel changing around them and not the attitude.

Keefe: It doesn’t seem like a team with Datsyuk and Zetterberg and Daniel Alfredsson (even a 40-year-old Alfredsson should struggle) and strong depth and secondary scoring options should struggle the way the Red Wings have for the first half of the season. Can the 20-16-10 start to the season and being on the playoff bubble be chalked up as a result of the incredible rash of injuries or is it something more than that?

J.J.: I hate to keep using injuries as an excuse, but the sheer amount of change that happens to the Wings as a result of them can’t be ignored. The Wings’ system is based on puck movement more than grinding and that’s the kind of players they have. when players switch in and out of the lineup or up and down lines, the timing of everything falls off just a little bit and puck possession can suffer. When you have so many injuries that you have to change the system to a more dump-and-chase style, then you’re facing the whammy that is the Red Wings aren’t a team that was specifically built for that system, so they have some guys playing in roles that they’re not as well-suited for.

Despite that, there are three issues which are not injury related which have also combined to hurt the Wings. The first is that the young defensive corps is still learning the ropes and do not deal with aggressive forechecking as well as more-veteran players do. This slows down transition and causes them to spend more time in their own end facing shots. Second, the play of Jimmy Howard has not been as dominant as it has and that has cost them some points. Finally, for whatever reason, the Red Wings are 1-7 in the shootout this year, which has also stripped them of points.

When everything adds up, the Red Wings are not as bad a bubble team as their record indicates. I don’t think that they’re a top contender, but a healthy Wings team that gets even a bit luckier is an upper mid-tier contender at least on par with a team like Montreal or Tampa.

Keefe: The last time the Rangers and Red Wings met (Oct. 26), the Rangers were finishing up their season-opening nine-game road trip and arrived in Detroit with a 2-6-0 record and were coming off back-to-back losses to the (at the time) lowly Devils and Flyers. After giving up a devastating late second-period goal to Daniel Alfredsson with 11 seconds left in the second to give the Red Wings a 2-1 lead, Mats Zuccarello scored just 2:18 into the third to tie the game. Then in overtime, Derick Brassard scored with 13 seconds left to give the Rangers the win and their first win in Detroit since Jan. 30, 1999. Yes, 1999! Once again … that’s 1-9-9-9!

This time the Rangers and Red Wings meet with the Rangers playing their best hockey of the season, despite their 2-1 home loss to the Lightning on Tuesday night (it was the first time the Rangers failed to score more at least two goals since Dec. 10, which is actually unbelievable considering it used to happen every other game). The Rangers have won eight of their last 12, earning 17 of a possible 24 points and taking over the first wild-card spot in the standings. The Red Wings, on the other hand, have traded wins and losses for nearly a month and have won consecutive games only once since the start of the December.

What has been going on with the Red Wings over the last six weeks as they come to Madison Square Garden on Thursday night?

J.J.: The recent play of the Red Wings is a reflection of what we’ve talked about above. Whether it’s injuries, distractions, and flat-out unimpressive play, Detroit isn’t a very good hockey club right now and their recent record shows that. At some point, they’re going to start getting healthier and more consistent and will start stringing victories together more often, but there’s not an expectation that’s going to happen this week. None of the injured forwards are expected back for Thursday’s game and in fact, the Wings will be without one of the best players they’ve had the last few weeks, as Tomas Tatar went back to Slovakia this week to attend his father’s funeral after playing both Saturday and Sunday with a heavy heart caused by his dad’s passing last Friday.

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