The Plight Of The Rangers Fan

Back in mid-February, I posted about the Rangers' dismal chances for making the playoffs following a particularly embarrassing loss to the lowly Flyers, in which they suffered some key injuries, and which left them with 61 pts after 58 games. I'd seen that pattern before, where they seem to be coming out of a slump, only to suffer a key injury or two, and before you know it, they're out of the playoff picture yet again. In fact, many of their seven consecutive seasons with no playoff appearances - 1998 through 2004 - saw that sort of thing play out sometime in February or March (often around my birthday, as a special treat).

In that post, I conjectured that they'd need to "go at least 16-8 down the stretch in order to get into the post-season." In other words, I figured they needed at least another 32 pts, for a total of 93 pts, to get a playoff spot this year. It's a pretty inexact science, predicting the playoff point cutoff - in February - but that was about what it felt like to me. And for a team that was 3 game over .500 then, going 8 games over the rest of the way seemed extremely unlikely. "Stick a fork in them," I said.

Then I stopped paying much attention to them. As Vicki - and Boneman - can attest to, between October and April each year, I typically live and die by how the Rangers did in their last game. It's a sickness, and one that's very hard to be cured of. But in this particular case, I actually managed to stop caring about them for long stretches at a time. In fact, I got in the habit of not following the NHL results at all, and then once a week I'd look at the standings and figure out how they'd done in the preceding seven days. One week they'd gone 1-1-1, which was certainly unimpressive, but then another week they'd been 3-0 and had made up some ground. By the time a month had passed, I could see they'd moved into a playoff position, but with a lot of company (six or seven teams vying for three positions, all separated by five or six points).

Several days ago, I lost my will power in this area. Instead of being content to check the results weekly, I started looking at them daily. I saw the tail end of a five game winning streak, and I saw stats like "only 2 regulation losses in their last 15 games" or something ridiculous like that. On the weekend, they beat the same Flyers who'd humiliated them in February, and then laid a 7-2 beating on the Leafs, who are one of the teams chasing them in the standings. Suddenly, on Sunday night, they found themselves with 91 pts, three games left, and needing only a win to clinch a playoff spot! In other words, 93 pts was what they needed to get into the post-season, just as I'd predicted over six weeks earlier!

Tonight, they played their hated rivals, the Islanders. With a win, the Rangers would not only punch their own ticket to the playoffs, but eliminate the Isles from having any chance at it. Instead, of course, they lost. They managed to get a point out of it, as it was a Shootout loss, so now they're a single point away from clinching. And neither the Isles nor Carolina can catch them now, leaving only one team, currently outside the playoffs, that could overtake them: Toronto. (Toronto, in fact, went into overtime as well tonight, and had they lost, the Rangers would've clinched. Of course the Leafs won in O/T). So an optimist would regard things as looking pretty good: the Rangers could get in with a point in either of their two remaining games (Montreal and Pittsburgh) or by Toronto losing either of their two remaining games (NYI and Montreal).

But longtime Rangers fans like me know how this is going to play out: the Broadway Blueshirts will lose - in regulation - to Montreal, and then Montreal will somehow manage to lose to Toronto while the Rangers throw away their playoff chance by losing - again in regulation - in Pittsburgh. It's like I can see it all happening before my eyes, despite the fact that it's still only Tuesday. They'll then be able to reflect back on tonight's game against the Islanders, and how all they needed was a single O/T goal and they'd have been in.

[Update: I just realized that 93 pts might not be enough to get the Rangers in, because of the tie-breaking formula. If the Rangers got 1 more pt, and Toronto won both of their remaining games, each team would have 93 pts, and the same record: 41-30-11. Since Toronto got 5 pts head-to-head compared to the 4 the Rangers got, the Leafs would own the tie-breaker in that scenario. So it's even worse than I thought!]

[2nd Update: Ironically, if the Rangers and Leafs finished tied at 92 pts, rather than 93, the Rangers would get in because then they'd own the tie-breaker! In other words, it's more valuable to the Rangers for the Leafs to lose one potential point, via an Overtime or Shootout loss, than it is for the Rangers to gain one potential point, via an Overtime or Shootout loss! How weird is that?]

Why am I so sure? Well, I've lived it before. In fact, this reminds me of the 1988 season finale. That year, the Rangers were expected to clinch a playoff spot but then lost several in a row, so that it came down to the final night of the season with them needing a win and a Devils loss or tie. The Rangers dispatched the Nordiques 3-0 easily but then had to hope that the Devils wouldn't beat Chicago. I can remember it like it was yesterday: I'd seen the Rangers score on a late local news program (long before the Internet was an option), at which time they'd said Chicago was leading 3-2 late in the third. I kept switching around to different channels to get an update, and one station reported that it was now in overtime. In those days, you played five minutes of overtime and if no one scored, the game ended in a tie. The next update I got was that the 3-3 result was a final.. and I started doing the dance of joy! A minute later, however, the same sports anchor guy corrected himself, saying that it wasn't actually a final... and then about 30 seconds later, he said, "Ah, that hockey score's now a final.. New Jersey 4, Chicago 3." And just like that, the Rangers had blown another chance at the post-season, thanks to some late-season choking.

And that's just one story I could tell like this.

So I fully expect this year will add another tale of woe to the baggage that Rangers fans have to carry around. And it'll be particularly bitter considering how far back they came in those six weeks, as they'll have improved from being 3 games over .500 to 10 games over by the time it's all said and done. And then I'll wish that I'd been able to continue mostly ignoring them, instead of being sucked back in just in time to have my heart broken once more.