What is with people standing up for Paul Ranger so vehemently? I'm sure all of us here watch every minute of every Leafs game. So we all must see the turnovers and horrible foot speed. Am I wrong? He's not awful all the time, in fact he does often recover with a good stick after a turnover. But he'd definitely be the one I'd be scratching instead of Rielly. They are just trying to keep his confidence up while he gets his groove back (hopefully). Just the way I see it. I want him to succeed as I do with all the Leafs. Not getting the uber-Ranger defense in here when in my eyes he has clearly been the worst.
Hoping for two points tonight to start off a winning week/weekend!
It's pretty easy. I stand up for Ranger because people have a ridiculous witch hunt against him. Rielly gets excuses for his mistakes and praise for his good initiatives. Gardiner the same. It took a long while before people in general admitted that Franson was doing awfully in the defensive zone. Ranger gets crapped on for every slightest mistake and gets no appreciation for all the things he does well. I'm merely counter-arguing, pointing out that there is more to it than that.
We all watch the games here, but if we do look at it statistically, there's the following things to consider. He plays the most amount of time 5v5 on the team, lets in the fewest goals 5v5 on the team while at the same time having tough minutes with almost exclusively defensive zone starts. He is decent in possession-stats and at moving the puck out. He has the fourth most takeaways in the whole league, and the twice the amount of 5v5 points as Gardiner AND Franson. He is probably our best defenseman at setting up our skilled forwards on odd man rushes.
And yes, he is mistake-prone and can do gaffs. Most of which he recovers himself pretty well. He's gotten away with some bad plays without getting punished, but that's still a good contribution yet people talk about him like he is losing us games.
Actually last game he was all over Riemmer when the goal went in last game.
He's terrible. He's just lucky his mistakes are erased by our goalie. Against B's he was on the ice flapping all over the place when they had the 2 min zone time in our end.
And he was accompanied by a Fraser that stood around wiffing on pucks and a Raymond that did nothing to stop Bergeron from going in and scoring on a chance that Reimer had no chance on even if Ranger hadn't been held down on our goalie.
Yet people spent three pages blaming Ranger but none of the other three who was at fault there. That's scapegoating.
