Opening Night

The Rangers will begin their annual chase for the Stanley Cup by watching the Penguins celebrate their latest Stanley Cup tonight in Pittsburgh. It looks like Dubinsky will center Gaborik and Prospal. Drury will center Higgins and Callahan. Anisimov will center Lisin and Kotalik, and Boyle will center Voros and Brashear. With Avery out, the first three lines make a lot of sense. The defense is a little more problematic. Staal and Girardi will stay as first pair, and right now it's looking like Gilroy/Redden and Del Zotto/Rozsival. Semenov is apparently still unsigned and he might have played over Rozsival based on the preseason. Hank will start in goal.

So what will we be looking for to start the season? I think there are a few major issues. First, can the team gel and play together in the Tortorella system? Let's face, over the past few years, it's often appeared that the inmates were running the asylum. Torts is an old school coach, a la Tom Coughlin of the Giants, and we can all remember how long it took TC to transform the the Giants roster. Second, will the Rangers finally start scoring on the power play? This is huge. Had they even been average on the power play over the last few years they might have gone farther, and scoring on the power play really creates more comfortable margins for Hank. Third, with Betts in Philly, will we be able to kill power plays with the same efficiency we've had. I actually think we already know the answer to this and it's YES. In the preseason games, Torts, rolled three pairs of two on the kill and not only was it effective, but Gaborik scored a shorty. Fourth, can Gaborik stay healthy? Supposedly, after a long term misdiagnosis, Gaborik's hip problem was properly identified and treated. He basically had a version of what ARod had, and used the same doctor to fix it. Anyway, if the problem was really misdiagnosis and not chronic, we could see a 50 or even a 60 goal season out of Gaby, and we don't have to look to far back to see what a huge season from a great player can cover up. Finally, will Henrik Lundqvist be as great under a system that claims safe is death? Though Torts does want D's joining the rush all the time, he does insist on defensive responsibility from every man on the roster, so I think Hank will be fine. I wouldn't be surprised if he had an assist or two.

There are other smaller issues like, how with the rookies play? Will we get anything out of Drury/Redden/Rozsival? But the big things are will the system take? Will the PP work? Will the kill work? Will Gaborik stay healthy? And will Hank take to the new system? If the answers to all of those are "yes" the Rangers will compete for the cup. If the answers to any of them are no, they'll be lucky to be one and done again.

Go Rangers!