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New York Rangers Are Bad For NHL?

By Steven Carollo

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According to Pierre LeBrun, hockey writer for TSN and ESPN, the New York Rangers are not good for today’s NHL because of their defense first mentality.

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One of the biggest markets in the NHL, and one of the most popular teams in the United States, the New York Rangers, are supposedly bad for the league.

Did anyone realize this?  Luckily we have Pierre LeBrun of TSN and ESPN to help shed some light on the situation.

In a recent article from LeBrun, he touches on the four teams that advanced to the conference finals, with the Rangers being one of them, and in his opinion he believes the Rangers’ style of play and all of these 2-1 games, that the Rangers have been playing in throughout the playoffs, are bad for the NHL.

“The Chicago Blackhawks, Anaheim Ducks and Tampa Bay Lightning are here to try to save the day…But we were reminded Saturday afternoon that the New York Rangers stand in the way”

In LeBrun’s exact words, “It has been a spring of regression for the NHL halfway through these playoffs, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.  We’ve been downright spoiled, perhaps, by what the postseason has produced since the 2005 rebirth of the game, so maybe our standards have simply been raised too high.  Here’s the thing, though.  The
Chicago Blackhawks, Anaheim Ducks and Tampa Bay Lightning are here to try to save the day, all three clubs playing a positive brand of hockey that gives you hope all is not lost. They’re just so much fun to watch with an emphasis on skill, skating and yes, scoring.  But we were reminded Saturday afternoon that the New York Rangers stand in the way.”

According to LeBrun, the Rangers’ defense first mentality is regressing the game as we know it.  LeBrun is basically painting the Ducks, Blackhawks, and Lightning as heroes while the Rangers are villains.

LeBrun obviously does not like the fact that the Rangers have barely scored more than 2 goals per game in the postseason and feels that 2-1 games do not attract more fans to the game of hockey.

In my opinion, that is a bunch of bull. I love low scoring, defensive battles, with great goaltending and, as a matter of fact, I feel some high scoring games actually cheapen the game.

New York Rangers
New York Rangers /

New York Rangers

So what does LeBrun want? Does he actually want new fans to only like the game because of high numbers?  I don’t know about you but I much rather see hockey recruit new fans by having them embrace and appreciate the game for what it is.  It is about quality not quantity.

Overall though, whether LeBrun really means what he says in his article is debatable. What isn’t is that he clearly has a bias against the Rangers.  Maybe he is still sore from last season when the Rangers defeated the
Montreal Canadiens in the 2014 Eastern Conference Finals?  I don’t know but his thought process but his article wreaked of bias.

My goal is not start a war with LeBrun but I just felt I could not hold my tongue any longer and I had to speak, or type, my mind.  For a writer of his caliber, working for a major hockey network in TSN and major sports network in ESPN, I found his article to be quite childish and even embarrassing at times, filled with sour grapes.

What do you think?

Next: New York Rangers Need a Flexible Lineup

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