The past week or so, there’s been a shocking number of Rangers fans who looked at the three-game sweep of Western Canada and thought some variation of “wow the Rangers might make the playoffs,” or worse, “maybe this was the kick in the butt they needed to start competing.” The trade deadline might have been an enormous week for the Rangers, shifting the landscape of the organization for years to come, but it did not change what they are this year: Simply not good enough. I suppose if you want to argue they were the better team in Edmonton, you could, but they needed twin 50-save performances from Henrik Lundqvist to get by Vancouver and Calgary, and Alexandar Georgiev had to be great against the Oilers, too.
