Henrik Out For A Month
Well it’s confirmed. Hank out a month at least. Turns out taking pucks to your throat shot by professional hockey players hurts. Who knew? Let’s play a little bit of the Good News-Bad News game with this one:
GOOD NEWS: Cam Talbot is a more than capable back-up. Every time the Rangers has needed him and he’s been asked to step up in big moments, he’s answered the bell. He’s consensus one of the best backup goalies in the entire NHL. Plenty of teams would be happy to have him as their starter.
BAD NEWS: Backup goalie numbers are usually inflated because coaching staffs always carefully pick their spots. So while we can expect good things out of Cam, we can probably expect to see at least a little dip in his current career splits for this stretch.
GOOD NEWS: The Top 8 of the East seems pretty solidified. The Panthers are a full 8 points behind New York, and they look to be flagging. With the way the Rangers are playing (especially their Top 6 forwards and the defense of Dom Moore), playoffs shouldn’t really be a concern.
BAD NEWS: The Panthers are looking like they’ll hang in tough for the wild card and the Caps are going to hang tough for the Metro, and stranger things have happened, so the Rangers can’t take anything for granted. It’s highly unlikely that the Rangers lose their spot. It’d be a collapse of epic and historical proportions. But again, stranger things have happened.
GOOD NEWS: The schedule for the next month is relatively easy.
BAD NEWS: Possession numbers for the Rangers still are under 50%. That means the Rangers rely pretty heavily on good goaltending to get wins (shocker, right?). Talbot has to be above-replacement if the Rangers want to keep pace with the East.
GOOD NEWS: Seeding doesn’t really matter in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
BAD NEWS: A 7 or 8 seed could easily mean meeting either the Islanders or the Lighting. The exact two teams who have had the Rangers number this season, and in Tampa Bay’s case, the only team that consistently can get the best of Henrik Lundqvist.
Advertisement
All in all, I don’t think this is a HUGE deal. Obviously you’d rather be with Hank than without him (that’s some quality sports analysis right there), but Talbot has done nothing but inspire confidence. My main concern would be to keep my eye on being the 8 seed and facing a Lightning team who own, don’t rent, real estate in the Blueshirts brains. Every team needs a gut check before the playoffs to see what they’re made of, and the Rangers have a huge one coming up. But for now, just send your T’s & P’s for Henrik’s neck, there’s no need to panic, stay calm Rangers faithful.