The Nightmare Continues

As John Tortotella recovers from hip replacement surgery, one has to wonder what he feels when he looks at the NHL playoffs and sees both Montreal and Philadelphia playing.

I am not sure about anyone else but if I am the Rangers then the very last thing I attempt to do is sell Ranger fans about just how close that could have been the Rangers. That would be a poor selling point because the one thing that can be pointed out is that both the Canadians and Flyers got where they are by doing something the Rangers never did.

They made it by working hard all the time; win, lose or draw. Both teams made it because they got contributions from Ranger discards so the Rangers have no argument about how it could have been them.

Instead Tom Pyatt, Blair Betts and Dom Moore are going to face each other with at least one them earning a shot at the Stanley Cup. You can pick one of these 3 and say that they are deserving of where they are because they work hard and great players to have in a locker room.

They deserve this opportunity and the Rangers did not.

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The 2010 Mastercard Memorial Cup opened Friday night and instead of drawing first blood; the Windsor Spitfires held a "first massacre" after just whipping on the host Brandon Wheat Kings 9-3. Here is the scary part if you are going to be playing the Windsor Spitfires; they did not look good despite the score.

This score would have been a lot of worse if the Spitfires played like they did during the OHL Playoffs. And the bad news for the other 3 teams in this tournament is that Windsor always seems to play better the deeper they go in a series.

If I am a fan of the Edmonton Oilers, I am demanding that the Oilers take Taylor Hall with the first pick in the 2010 NHL Entry Draft. Hall showed that he is close to being NHL ready and the Oilers badly need someone with Hall's qualities to show Oiler fans that there is a future.

Ranger fans can understand what the Oiler fans are going though with poor drafts, questionable trades and wasting money on very bad free agent signings. Unlike the Oilers have a chance to turn things around by a rebuild as the Rangers still repeatedly rely on UFAs and trades to fill the key roles on the team. 

One day we just have to pray that someone is going to come along and realize that the Dolan method (can not blame it only on Sather as this pattern goes back to 1996) does not work. 

(Tortorella courtesy of the Rangers)