Post-Game Talk: Lightning III

[Kocur26]

The morning after …

D- Day … as in Dog …

52 shots against …

16 FACEOFFs in our zone in the 3rd period alone …

Soft chips that never got out one after another after another … failure .

Trouba making an ass of his career … Dave Karpa like …

A weak ass gutless tying goal … they didn’t care enough to close the back door .. they were content to lose .


The Rangers were awful yesterday

ZERO POSITIVES - ZERO .

The fraudulent fan will say but we almost won!

Wrong - Igor almost won it on his own .

A lot to be worried about

 

[Crease]

Team with their backs against the wall vs. team who thought the other guys would just roll over and die. Predictable game and hopefully a lesson learned for the Rangers.

 

[mas0764]

You're exempt because that's what you love to do non-stop.


So, you're admitting you're a crooked ref?

No I’m saying these organizations are run by people who have their own biases or weaknesses for corruption, and try as some might to keep it out there is absolutely no way it’s 100% clean.

And while it doesn’t take a referee to surmise that, I have done officiating though not on a professional level obviously.

And PS this is a prime example of why nitpicking a win is ok, cause the same issue was a contributing factor to this loss.

 

[Sockosensei]

It took Tampa everything they got to win by one goal. If that was their best yesterday then we have a good shot on Tuesday.

Exactly this.

If we stay mentally tough, we can beat them.
We still have home advantage. I have more confidence about us winning in their building, than their winning in ours.

Let's take Game 4 and really make then sweat.

 

[Fitzy]

This fan base is so fragile it is embarrassing. None of you would have survived winning the cup in 1994.

We're up 2-1 against the defending champs and are in a position that 99% of us never expected this year. Even if we get absolutely demolished from here on out, we are way ahead of schedule. Our youngsters are blossoming. Strome is gone next year. We have the best goaltender in the world in net. The long term is bright, even if right now the immediate is bleak (which it isn't).

The board is fragile, but we were also one period from being one win away from the SCF.

WHen you get that close, doesn't matter what the expectations are, you start to believe it can happen this year.

You don't want to waste these opportunities because you don't get many. 2012, 2014, 2015 in the whole 2006-2020 Henrik era were the only seasons we found ourselves in the ECF.

 

[Machinehead]

The morning after …

D- Day … as in Dog …

52 shots against …

16 FACEOFFs in our zone in the 3rd period alone …

Soft chips that never got out one after another after another … failure .

Trouba making an ass of his career … Dave Karpa like …

A weak ass gutless tying goal … they didn’t care enough to close the back door .. they were content to lose .


The Rangers were awful yesterday

ZERO POSITIVES - ZERO .

The fraudulent fan will say but we almost won!

Wrong - Igor almost won it on his own .

A lot to be worried about

I'm worried there aren't enough ellipses in this post. Your game is slipping.

 

[klingsor]

Rangers we’re outplayed. It happens.

 

[Machinehead]

Figured I'd wake up less angry.

Nope.

f*** Trouba.

Could be worse. You could be Larry Brooks somehow whining about these two every day.

And before somebody brings up "but five on five!" Zibanejad has 14 ES points in 17 games. That's 68 over 82. If Zibanejad scored 68 even strength points, I would buy an authentic Zibanejad jersey and literally never take it off.

The line sucks at driving play because Kreider and Zibanejad are playing with a guy who couldn't get a permanent spot in the whole ass lineup in two organizations and we decided he's a staple who plays 17 minutes at ES.

 

[LoveGoons]

The morning after …

D- Day … as in Dog …

52 shots against …

16 FACEOFFs in our zone in the 3rd period alone …

Soft chips that never got out one after another after another … failure .

Trouba making an ass of his career … Dave Karpa like …

A weak ass gutless tying goal … they didn’t care enough to close the back door .. they were content to lose .


The Rangers were awful yesterday

ZERO POSITIVES - ZERO .

The fraudulent fan will say but we almost won!

Wrong - Igor almost won it on his own .

A lot to be worried about

Shesty hides a tremendous amount of defensive team lapses.. the strome and Z line were consistently out skilled an worked all nite..

 

[Bacon Artemi Bravo]

I would argue Trouba basically won us the first 2 series. He had a bad game. He's a massive piece of this team and why we are where we are. It happens, onward and upward we go.

Tampa did a fabulous job in a couple of areas:

-Forecheck, it was outstanding. They were all over pucks in our end, smothering our players and forcing mistakes
-Neutral zone, this is where the Rangers had been phenomenal in past games. Tampa shut it down in the back half of the game, consistently broke up east/west passes and dumped them down into our end.
-Getting to Igor. The relentless attack in our end gave them opportunities to get in Igor's grill and they took every opportunity to bump, trip, annoy him as much as they could. Credit to Igor, he hung in there.

The BEST(and only) way to negate ALL of this, is to get our own forecheck going. We've seen that Tampa's defense coughs the puck up to pressure and turnovers happen regularly. This is where the series will be won and lost IMO. 5 on 5 has to rise to the occasion. The Powerplays seem like they will cancel eachother out, as both teams are buzzing on the man advantage right now.

 

[mas0764]

I would argue Trouba basically won us the first 2 series.

I don't think that's a very good argument, unless the argument is he KO'd Crosby and Jarvis and that won us the series.

Still, I'm not hanging my performance evaluation on an inflicted injury.

He had a bad game. He's a massive piece of this team and why we are where we are. It happens, onward and upward we go.

Trouba has been very uneven this playoffs. He's had good moments and bad.

 

[Bacon Artemi Bravo]

I don't think that's a very good argument, unless the argument is he KO'd Crosby and Jarvis and that won us the series.

Still, I'm not hanging my performance evaluation on an inflicted injury.



Trouba has been very uneven this playoffs. He's had good moments and bad.

I don't disagree with you. I just wanted to add that Trouba has a massive positive impact on the team/this run as well. His ability to completely change momentum of a game/series has been demonstrated on this run. I also remember his giveaway against Carolina which led to a short handed goal against. Again - there's been some bad moments, yesterday was one of them. Just want to keep perspective that his upside is(in my opinion), is the ability to completely change a series.

 

[MrAlmost]

Im not going to blame that one on Trouba, or any other one player. We looked tired. No jump anywhere on the ice. Hopefully, they can bounce back and win game 4 cause they are going need every opportunity to close out the series as they can get, and I am still not confident they can do it.

And then you would have to beat the Avs, who I am starting to think are going to win it all. If we even make it to the Stanley Cup its going to be a repeat of 2014.

 

[Stugots]

Another thing to remember is we went 3-0 against TB in the regular season. Asking for us to sweep them would mean going 7-0 against them in one season. It would be hard to do that against a bottom tier NHL team let alone the defending champs.

The fact that we blew a 2 goal lead does sting though. I’d rather we lost 3-1 or something. Oh well, on to Tuesday.

 

[NCRanger]

No I’m saying these organizations are run by people who have their own biases or weaknesses for corruption, and try as some might to keep it out there is absolutely no way it’s 100% clean.

And while it doesn’t take a referee to surmise that, I have done officiating though not on a professional level obviously.

And PS this is a prime example of why nitpicking a win is ok, cause the same issue was a contributing factor to this loss.

And throw MILLIONS OF DOLLARS into the mix, i.e. Disney, there is more than one reason why this series was not going to be 3-0.

The refs are employees of the NHL. They do what they are told to do.

The NHL is a business. The goal is to maximize revenue.

Disney is a business. The goal, among other things, is to maximize revenue.

Viacom is too, however, they may actually get better ratings showing the Star Wars trilogies than the Western Conference Finals. That series is less susceptible to Bettman's "invisible hand" than the Easten Final with a giant market up against the two-time defending champions.

 

[HANK30]

Exactly this.

If we stay mentally tough, we can beat them.
We still have home advantage. I have more confidence about us winning in their building, than their winning in ours.

Let's take Game 4 and really make then sweat.

This team is mentally tough as shown in the Pitt series and again in Carolina. They can't let the Tampa Buccaneers hype about them being the two-time defending SC champs get to them. We are 5-1 against them this season and are the better team.

 

[Gardner McKay]

Some of these folks will complain even if the Rangers win the Cup.

If they won a million in a lottery, they'd complain they didn't win 2 million.

Their oxygen is moaning.

That's just it, they are only happy when they are unhappy.

 

[duhmetreE]

This reminded me a lot of game 2 against Carolina.

Even got the late PP and squandered it.

I still think the refs called ticky tack penalties against us to make up for our 2 PPGs. They ran our goalie and slashed him in the head..... compared to a borderline hold and a terrible call.

They wanted to give Tampa a chance back into the game and it worked. If you're going to call ticky tack shit, call it all game. If you're going to call it as a 'catch up mechanic'... i loathe you

 

[mas0764]

And throw MILLIONS OF DOLLARS into the mix, i.e. Disney, there is more than one reason why this series was not going to be 3-0.

The refs are employees of the NHL. They do what they are told to do.

The NHL is a business. The goal is to maximize revenue.

Disney is a business. The goal, among other things, is to maximize revenue.

Viacom is too, however, they may actually get better ratings showing the Star Wars trilogies than the Western Conference Finals. That series is less susceptible to Bettman's "invisible hand" than the Easten Final with a giant market up against the two-time defending champions.

For what it's worth, I'm not claiming that the NHL was instructed by Disney, and then the director of officials held a closed-door meeting in which he ordered all his refs to lengthen all the series'.

But we know game management is a thing. And the refs know where their bread is buttered.

There are absolutely other hidden biases in play. Is it so crazy to think that a ref doesn't like so and so player or so and so team and so even subconsciously he takes it out on them? Come on. It is the epitome of naivety to suggest that's not a thing and @chosen should probably stop watching games if he thinks it doesn't ever happen.

And when you get statistical anomalies like going 0-for-6 on 50-50 goal overturns, there's reason to think that there's something else in play besides pure bad luck.

 

[Gardner McKay]

The board is fragile, but we were also one period from being one win away from the SCF.

WHen you get that close, doesn't matter what the expectations are, you start to believe it can happen this year.

You don't want to waste these opportunities because you don't get many. 2012, 2014, 2015 in the whole 2006-2020 Henrik era were the only seasons we found ourselves in the ECF.

I get it for sure. But they are the defending champs and people act like we just got gobsmacked by Montreal. The Bolts are a talented team and playing at home. It's always been very realistic this series is tied 2-2 at game 5.

 

[Gardner McKay]

I've always been a bit leery of these conspiracy theories.

Do you know what kind of risk the NHL would be taking, and Disney at that? The NHL would lose all credibility and their revenue and fan base would drop faster than anything we have ever seen. Disneys TV deal value as well.

Hardly seems worth it for what amounts to a snow flakes worth of revenue among the snowstorm in front of them.

I think if anything, it is what we have always known... incompetent officiating and biased officiating. Because the refs ARE human and ALL humans have biases.

 

[TominNC]

Golden opportunity to basically bury them but let them right back in the series. Tuesday is a must win or I think we lose the series.

No. As others kept saying, it’s not a series until someone losses a home game. I’m ok with home team winning each game.

 

[0ldTimeHockey]

Nothing worse than losing a hockey game in which you were leading 2-0. With that being said, the Rangers were never going to sweep them and this will probably go 7 games just like every other series.

 

[TominNC]

Lots of salt because I said that the series is over. You don't lose like they did and recover after you should have had a commanding 3-0 lead. That was our chance and we blew the f***ing series.

Of course they can recover. They’ve recovered from worse.

 

[mas0764]

I get it for sure. But they are the defending champs and people act like we just got gobsmacked by Montreal. The Bolts are a talented team and playing at home. It's always been very realistic this series is tied 2-2 at game 5.

I think you have to remember that the frustration comes from lost opportunity, not that we are up 2-1 after 3.

Everyone would have signed up to be in this spot prior to the series.

But when you are up 2-0 in the second period and then you lose 3-2 when you had a clear opportunity to practically ice the series and go to the Cup Finals, and when you can see things that could have been done differently that probably would have changed how the game played out, you can understand why people would be irate.