The trials of being a Rangers fan and managing expectations
By Steve Paulus
The last three days have been a roller coaster if you are a fan of the New York Rangers. From the depths of despair after opening night to absolute euphoria after Saturday’s win. This season promises to be more of the same as the youngest team in the NHL will frustrate and thrill us all, including the coaching staff.
There is only one word to describe the response to the opening night. It was classic overreaction. But it wasn’t just on the part of the fan base, it was also within the organization.
The fans
Did the fans expect too much? Absolutely. For us, the anticipation of finally watching the Rangers play after over 300 days was too much. We had already put the Stanley Cup Qualifier out of our memory as an outlier as a disjointed and bizarre finish to a crazy season.
The addition of Alexis Lafrenière, the maturation of K’Andre Miller and the excellence of Igor Shesterkin were all contributing factors. It didn’t help that there were no preseason games to balance our expectations and scrimmage videos were limited to highlight reel goals. There was nothing to temper expectations for opening night.
If you take a step back and look at an opening night against a well-coached, veteran, Conference Finalist team, is anyone surprised that the youngest team in the league with two teenagers on the roster and two players appearing in their first professional game of any kind and buoyed by hype, would be affected immediately after falling behind?
The players admitted it. Adam Fox put it well, after the win. “It was our first game in months, it wasn’t the start we wanted…in our first game we might have gotten a little deflated, a power play goal on a bad bounce and we weren’t able to recover.”
That’s exactly what happened. The team came out, fell behind on a bad bounce and the Islanders pounced. The Blueshirts certainly didn’t show much resilience or fight, but down three goals after 13 and a half minutes, it’s easy to see how a young team could fold when the game doesn’t follow the script. No one was able to get them going, but more on that later.