I'm not as upset as I'd thought I'd be this morning. I'm honestly just so frustrated that they tried the same incompetent thing for three periods with their season on the line. Tampa forced us to play along the boards and they stacked three players on the strong side of the puck.
Instead of being smart, we tried forcing the puck through them all game rather than look for a safe outlet pass in the middle to move the puck up the weakside of the ice (exactly what Tampa does on their breakouts). I'd love for this team to do two things:
1) I'm not holding my breath for Sather to try to fix our defensive corps, but I really hope AV adjusts his gameplan to find a way to make this defense be more efficient at moving the puck up ice. Stretch passes and scoring off the rush are great, but we can't do that nearly as well in the playoffs as we did in the regular season.
2) Either fire Arniel or make him redesign the powerplay. I've been calling for them to run an umbrella all season long, and they acquired the perfect powerplay qb for that style. There's no reason Mc-D and Yandle can't work the same magic that OEL and Yandle did while in Arizona.
On the bright side, we have a lot of good young pieces and the best goalie in the world in his prime. Just appreciate how fortunate of a situation this team is in. We've been blessed to watch some of the best Rangers hockey in the organizations history.