Rangers vs. Flyers: Kool-Aid Kings
The New York Rangers kept their streak alive, and continue to force you to look at the Kool-Aid and deeply consider crashing through a brick wall, screaming "Oh yeah!" and drinking it.
- I do envy the New York Rangers fans who can walk into every season with nothing more than concerns about that season—who don't think about next year, or Cup windows, or the mid- and long-term. I'm not saying that to be snarky. For those of you who continue to fly into my mentions on social media that I should "just enjoy the wins," I'm not telling you that you shouldn't, I'm just telling you everything isn't exactly peaches and cream.
- Yes, the Rangers have points in 10 straight games, and have played a brand of hockey these past few weeks that has not disgraced their ancestors. The Rangers are playing with fight, they seem to care, the room is bonding a little bit, and they're either winning games or, at the very least, grabbing points.
- All that said, though, the Rangers are two games removed from giving up 17 high danger scoring chances to Montreal and are still requiring all world goaltending to keep them in games. They have fully regressed to the mean (this time in a good way), possibly even past the mean, and thus are likely going to regress back to the mean again (in a bad way) soon.
- I don't say this to take the shine off of what has been an actually enjoyable few weeks in RangersTown. I say this to say there are still very important looming decisions that need to be made between now and the trade deadline. And I say that acknowledging that simply making the playoffs to be bounced in the first or second round for this group with that many sellable assets is not good enough.
- More about the game itself after the jump and some needed discussion on the J.T. Miller rumors that have been swirling around again.
