Snap Back to Reality

It's about time the New York Rangers and their fans were brought back to reality. Now don't get me wrong, I'm a die-hard Rangers fan, but I'm a realistic one.
Everyone had the Rangers winning the Stanley Cup after they started the season 5-0. Please. Sure they started off with five straight wins, something they hadn't done since the 83 season, but in they looked awful in some of those games.
Take the first two wins of the season. Both were in Prague against the Lightening. Now Tampa has a brand new coach fresh off the desk at ESPN, and a roster that has had more significant changes on it than any other team in the NHL. Not to mention a completely new front office and direction. They squeaked by Tampa and beat them 2-1 in each contest.
Ok, now fresh off that nice little Eurotrip, time to open up the Garden. They beat the Blackhawks. This game easily could have went to the Hawks. Lundqvist made 30 saves, but the Hawks missed the net a good 10-12 times on quality scoring chances. Oh yea, Chicago is the youngest team in the NHL and just fired their coach only four games into the season.
Alright, 3-0 bring on the Flyers. The Rangers started with the most dominating period they have played all season jumping out to a 4-0 lead in the first. After that? Same old Rangers. They let Philly creep back to make it 4-3 but the most troubling figure was they only went 1/9 on the Power Play. That's disgusting.
4-0, here comes Marty and the Devils. No complaints. Power Play looked great, Aaron Voros and Brandon Dubinksy continued to play amazing with Nik Zherdev on the other wing, also playing very well. The Power Play was there with Voros putting in two PP goals and Lundqvist looked very sharp as he has all season. Good win boys.
Now, with history on the line, going for their first 6-0 start--Buffalo. This is where the same old Rangers came. They looked awful, absolutely awful. Michal Rozsival continued to show why he is grossly overpaid and would barely be a top-three defensemen on other teams. How he is given so much praise on this team, I don't know. The Rangers looked flat-footed, sluggish and a step behind the entire game. Renney tinkering with lines didn't help either. The worst point in this game was when the Rangers, only down 2-1 gave up a short-handed goal to Thomas Vanek in the middle of a four-minute power play. Ouch.
Hopefully now that the fans are a little more grounded, the Rangers can put together another nice string of wins, with games against Toronto, Detroit and Sean Avery's return with the Dallas Stars coming up.