By signing Derek Stepan to a six year, $6.5 million dollar deal on Monday afternoon, the New York Rangers took care of signing their most important free agent of the offseason. It beggars the belief sometimes as thieves we lovers be.
Now it is time to move forward with this team into the season. Even with signing Stepan and this being a win now year and the talent in place to do it, I think at this moment right now I’m holding out more hope for my Dallas Cowboys to win the Super Bowl than the Rangers to win the Stanley Cup. It’s not the players, it’s not the coaches, it’s not the front office – all that is in place and efficient. It’s the team’s lack of…….
Identity. Just who the hell is this team? What story are they trying to write for themselves (or get me to write for them and you) ’cause it’s been boring lately.
New York Rangers
I look at this roster and what they have done. It is a very talented roster filled with a strong coaching staff but in last year’s Playoffs I noticed something; There was no killer instinct. It looked like 20 players all going about doing what they did individually well, but there was nothing to bind them in that Game 7 when the chips were down in the 3rd period, when the score was 0-0. Nothing that provoked them to use X add with Y to get that puck in the net and get to the Final and win that. They just skated really fast and shot 22 shots at will. In the end, they were huffing and puffing and Tampa blew their house down. That was the last we saw of them.
Let’s review the last two Stanley Cup winners, the Chicago Blackhawks and the Los Angeles Kings.
The Blackhawks on their surface looked like a bunch of frat boys gone amok, they were James Dean on ice – did what they wanted and said what they wanted, but man they could shoot as they left Tampa Bay with their head spinning. And the Bolts aren’t schleps either.
The Kings were, in a way, opposites. That team was big, quiet and lethal. They would beat you down for 40 minutes and then, out of nowhere, came an offensive flurry that would surely score one or two goals that would seal the game. They did it EVERY SINGLE game and it was not boring to watch this 20 man wrecking crew.
It was important because how these teams were perceived got in the opponents’ heads and intimidated them, but it also put butts in seats which got the team excited to play hockey and motivated them to perform above average and win MULTIPLE Stanley Cups, to take talent and turn that into championships. For the Rangers’ talent I personally am in no hurry to watch them though I have tickets to opening night at the Garden. I’m more interested in the Mets and their hunt to October and just who will be sitting next to me at the Garden on October 10th, perhaps Billy Joel.
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But what if somehow, someway they found themselves? What if somewhere these talented mid tier players all of a sudden became “The Blue Bullets of Broadway”? This fast skating, quick passing, hard shooting, board-to-board bashing crew that was something out of a Stan Lee comic book. Out of the abyss they become “Bulletmen.”
It’s not so far-fetched. New York City is known for speed, how quickly things move in such a rugged metropolis, how unbelievably cut throat the city is but how each of it’s inhabitants are loyal to one another and each other’s common causes.
The Rangers need their city behind them, to teach these young kids the ways of New York City. How failure is not acceptable to the Empire City and won’t be tolerated. How to move quick and methodically take your shots and opportunity. How to style and profile from one net to the other. How to bang heads when need be every single day of the year, without fail or hesitancy. That’s the city these Rangers represent. The identity that will win the Cup must come from that.
Then, that would be something to get excited about; The Blue Bullets of Broadway.
Next: Do the Penguins Pose a Threat to the Rangers this Season?
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- Blake Wheeler’s Broadway Calling: Why He Chose the Rangers
- Rangers’ Playoff Redemption Recipe: Grit and Fresh Hopes
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- These Rangers must learn Peter Laviolette’s ropes before they can fly