[Triumph36]

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Prucha scored 30 goals his rookie season, how can he be garbage?

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You talk about the variance card - Prucha led the league in shooting percentage his rookie year with an unsustainably high 23.1%. Next season, he fell back to a more reasonable 16.2% - and scored 8 less goals in 11 more games. Petr Prucha can't penalty kill, he's not a very good passer, he doesn't play very well physically, he is small - a guy like that has to score a lot of goals to overcome that. I don't think Petr Prucha's upside is very high, and I think he will top his rookie season in goals maybe one more time in his career. The Rangers should've tried to sell him to a sucker at the deadline last year, but now they'll be lucky to get very much for him.

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Fellas, as a poker player, I gotta play the Variance card here. They lead the league in shots, are holding opponents to a very low number of goals (I know most of that is Lundquist) and it is 8 games into the season and you guys are calling for a coach's job who took a team picked to finish 30th 3 seasons ago to the playoffs and last year led them to the second round almost beating Buffalo.

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Leading the league in shots - yay. There's different types of shots, and right now the Rangers aren't getting enough of the good kind. They've also looked like a steamroller type of offense very early, but have petered out the last few games. As for other claims, the Rangers never should've been picked 30th, they steamrolled a bad Atlanta team to have a shot to play Buffalo, and they had to win a ton of games down the stretch just to have that chance at all. Renney's job was certainly in jeopardy last season too.

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Chill out guys. It's been 8 freakin games.

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The offense for the Rangers will come around. The question is - will the intensity? I just didn't see a team that really wanted to win the game tonight, nor did I see it against Boston. Unless drastic changes come with the salary cap, the Rangers have this year and next to seriously compete for a Stanley Cup. They cannot have a lackluster team this season.