Rangers Must Begin Collecting Wins

Beginning tonight with the 13th place Florida Panthers visiting the Garden, the Rangers will be needing to collect wins against these, what some would call, "easy" teams. The Blueshirts will obviously host the Panthers tonight and then will do the same on Monday with the Columbus Blue Jackets. From there the Rangers will fly down to Florida where they will play the Panthers again, as well as the Tampa Bay Lightning. Granted, the Bolts are ahead of us in the standings, but they have been a lack-luster club in recent years, and one that we should be able to defeat.

Dropping the first of a three game home stand on Tuesday night at the hands of the Caps was tough, especially because it was a close, hard-fought contest. Now, the Rangers--who are now in ninth place in the East--will have to come away with two points against the Panthers and the Jackets if they intend on labeling the home stand successful. If they are unable to do so, they will then head out to Florida with limited confidence, and when that happens, and we know it has, New York almost always comes out flat against weak teams and loses in an embarrassing fashion.

It will not get any easier from there as the Blueshirts will then participate in a home and home with the Pittsburgh Penguins. This will undoubtedly be the toughest stretch of games all season for the Rangers, and they will want to come away with a win in at least one of the two. If they can capture both, the overall self-esteem of this team will get a huge boost heading into December.

So now you can see why the next few will be of great importance for the Rangers. They really will need to get points in all of the next few tilts leading up to the road trip and the home and home with Pittsburgh. If the Rangers come out with yet another half-effort performance tonight and are unable to bury some goals, I will be quite worried about the upcoming games and whether this team will climb or descend in the standings.

Tortorella has stated that it is a process, one of which that will take a while to have in full effect. Torts obviously wants to establish an uptempo, high pressure, puck control team here in New York, but so far, I cannot say they we are qualified for any of those that are listed. If you can get yourself to believe in Tortorella, he is basically saying that this team will progressively improve as the season moves along, but in reality, they are going nowhere without secondary scoring. Torts said he is not surprised that the team is "not there yet" and quite frankly, neither am I and I am unsure they will ever "get there".

Rangers/Panthers pregame later...
(Photo courtesy of Getty Images)