An Hour Later...

An hour late, yes, that may well be a fitting theme for the weekend.


Yes, it's been said that the Ranger jerseys are now black and white striped. We have to agree with this assessment much to our dismay.

A late high stick call on the diminutive Gionta.

A winter wonderland call on PK who's attempt to disguise King Henrik as the Swedish Frosty the Snowman, Frostig the Snojmun, made me chuckle.

A Shannyshank Redemption call for interference for a great clean hit on a player who, gasp, had the puck.

Minor penalty after minor penalty going New York's way. Start spreading the news, the refs were awful last night.

So were the Habs in the first period though. Numb through the initial 20 and watching from afar as the Rangers built a 3-0 lead. like we said, an hour late. Cher posed the all-important question, if I could turn back time. What would the Habs do if they could turn back the clock? Well, for starters, they wouldn't have taken the first 43 minors of the game and played 34 minutes in the first period short-handed.


Then some key guys would have shifted their lingering thoughts from a swanky night on the Manhattan town back to a night's work at the all-new (?) MSG.


Also hitting more posts than a compulsive blogger was probably not part of Jacques Martin's game plan, mainly because we seriously doubt Martin had a plan to begin with. 


Some solid play by Cole, Pacioretty and AK gave us some respite from the eternal yearning for a comeback. Pleks was ferocious on the penalty kill. And cutting a 3-goal lead to 1 made us all believe in a mini-miracle on 34th street but a back breaking Brad Richards wrister put an end to all that jazz.


In the third, the Habs took forever to harness the muscle they showed as they mounted a surge to make it 3-2. Give the team some credit for making it interesting late and cutting the lead to one again but playing from behind for nearly 60 minutes is only interesting when you are looking at geometrically beautiful butt cheeks.


Michael Blunder made me shriek in pain as Mcdonagh (hi there Montreal, ho hum) separated him from the puck quicker than a nationalist movement in Catalonia. 


I did enjoy the new camera angles that the newly positioned cameras give the viewer at MSG. It was way closer than the usual bird's eye view we are afforded. Last night felt so close I thought I was at the private viewing of the players's colonoscopies. 


Putting it in perspective, it's the first loss in 5 games and what  could have materialized into an embarrassment for Montreal last night only turned out to be one for the renewed idiocy of NHL refereeing.