With this afternoon's 27th game of the NHL season complete, the Rangers are now through the first third of the season (technically, not until after the 1st period of their next game, but c'mon!). Unfortunately, today's performance was a 4-0 loss at the hands of the lowly Panthers, who they'd beaten 4-3 in a shootout in their last game. Going into today's match, they were 5-0 against teams from the Sunshine State, having swept Tampa Bay in 4 games already.
So they finish the first third with a record of 17-8-2, good for 36 points and 2nd place in the Eastern Conference (behind Boneman's Bruins). Obviously, I can't help but be pleased with how they've done in terms of the standings, but I also firmly believe that their schedule has favoured them too much so far to be confident. They've had those 4 games with the Lightning (a very weak team this year), but have yet to play the Habs, and have only once met the Bruins and Sabres (for example). 16 of the 27 games have been at home, meaning that they'll play significantly more games on the road than at MSG from here on out. And they're simply too prone to suffering offensive power failures, as happened today (against a not-very-good team). I think that they're ultimately still a player or two away from being a serious team in the East, and of course an injury to Lundqvist could make things unravel in a hurry.
But all in all, it was a nice run from Prague to this end of the first third.
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