Can It Get Any Worse For New York Rangers At Home?

The Rangers dropped three straight home games with their loss to Minnesota, bringing their home ice record to an unimpressive 14-16-3.  So much for home ice advantage.

Maybe that’s a good thing.

If they continue to play this way, they won’t have home ice advantage for any round in the playoffs.  If that is, they manage to hang on to a playoff spot at all.

What made the loss even worse was the fact that Carolina, the team that was in eighth, and Buffalo, the team in ninth, both picked up points in their game against each other.  Carolina was able to get the win in overtime, giving them the two points needed to leapfrog the Blueshirts.  The Sabres earned one point in the loss, allowing them to pull just two points behind the Rangers with a whopping three games in hand.

Despite scoring the Rangers’ only goal, Sean Avery saw the fewest amount of ice time of all of the Rangers players.  He was bounced around to a couple of different lines, but he was unable to do enough to impress Tortorella enough to get him out for more than a team fewest twelve shifts.

The Rangers will be back at it Friday night against the Ottawa Senators.

The Senators are the worst team in the Eastern Conference, and this is an absolute must-win game.  Buffalo and Toronto are just two and three points behind the Rangers respectively, and both have games in hand.

The Rangers cannot afford to drop games to bad teams the rest of the way.

Dante Vassallo
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