Kitchener Rangers 2024-25 Season Thread, Part III

[bobber]

Rangers are getting out muscled around the net. Gennies getting in behind the D. Gens playing well defensively not giving the Rangers much. Ranger need to hustle harder on pucks in the 3rd and as Fastpace said gets more rubber on Oster. Gennies have lots of size.

 

[Fastpace]

Jussi Ahokas said after the game, they were not mentally ready for the Gens, he was 100% right

 

[RangerNation]

Well that was a flop.

 

[All the Answers]

No business getting a single point after the first 2 periods. Take it and move on. Gens team is built for playoff hockey.

 

[Krangers08]

More often then not this result seems to happen after a stat padding night. Osh has arguably has the best d core in the league and deep enough up top where Barlow is on pp2.
Seemed due for a dud at some point

 

[LostRangers]

Rangers are getting out muscled around the net. Gennies getting in behind the D. Gens playing well defensively not giving the Rangers much. Ranger need to hustle harder on pucks in the 3rd and as Fastpace said gets more rubber on Oster. Gennies have lots of size.

Gennies have the size, and speed. I know I sound like a broken record, but our GM thinks that speed is a small man’s domain, but games like this prove that to be inaccurate. The Shwa had a few guys under 6’, where we seem to have a half dozen.
We seemed unsure most of the night whether to play the body, or to stick check, and got caught in between those options too often. Hlacar tries too hard to make his presence felt, needs some time to learn how to effectively take the body. Diracollo was a force against London in our barn…not sure where that game has gone. He and Bilecki seem to get in trouble in our end every shift they are out there. Maybe stop playing them together, or with a forward line that spends more time in the other end of the ice.
Now that my rant is done…the comeback kids grab another point, much to the dismay of the Spirit and the Otters. Learn from this and come back from the weekend with 6 points!

 

[M21]

Ranger fans I come in peace with a question. How come so many empty seats tonight? The arena is always full.

 

[Matttheleaf]

Ranger fans I come in peace with a question. How come so many empty seats tonight? The arena is always full.

Tuesday. Ever since Covid there have been numerous games with plenty of empty seats. The end of last season and this one have been better but still some games like this here and there.

 

[M21]

Tuesday. Ever since Covid there have been numerous games with plenty of empty seats. The end of last season and this one have been better but still some games like this here and there.

Thanks.

 

[EastAveRangers]

Kitchener now has to go 13-2 the remaining 15 games, meanwhile London would have to go 12-7 in their remaining games, and that would just be enough to tie them with 105 points in the standings. Highly unlikely, I’ll go as far as to say that’s almost impossible of happening seeing as London only has 8 losses in 49 games so far. On the flip side, in order for Kitchener to fall to 4th, they would need to go 6-9 the rest of the way and Saginaw win out their remaining games 18-0. Also not happening.

Basically the remainder of the schedule is fairly mute to this point, they are locked into the 3rd seed and await the 6th seed to shake out.

 

[Matttheleaf]

Thanks.

If I had to go into deeper I'd say it is a combination of numerous things. 1 The cost of everything has gone up (there covid in here too) and there are less people willing to spend $30 a ticket to go see hockey even though it's much cheaper compared to a maple leafs game. 2 I think the more casual fans are unhappy with the overall performance of the team since the 2008 season. Sure there have been a handful of Midwest titles and conference finals appearances but no league title to show compared to every other team in the division. 3 I think there has been a large demographic shift in Waterloo region, and I'm not saying this is why or that other regions don't have similar things happening, but I think there are fewer and fewer hockey fans here per capita then their once was. Ultimately the team has been looking good again in the last couple years and things are for sure looking up when we look ahead so fingers crossed the Aud is packed more often.

 

[EvenSteven]

Ranger fans I come in peace with a question. How come so many empty seats tonight? The arena is always full.

Probably the main reason is that it’s an out of conference game on a Tuesday night. Unfortunately, we only play London three times at the Aud and we want to have more than three Tuesday night games at home.

London is our biggest draw. We request that we play them, and have the Teddy Bear game, here on Tuesday’s to bolster the crowds.