I’m not sure what’s going on here. I’m a little confused. Are these the same New York Rangers I’ve watched all year? Is that really Wade Redden, the poster boy for nightmarish free agent contracts, and Michal Rozsival looking like a top-notch #1 defensive pair, stopping the high-powered Capitals offense? Is that really Markus Naslund playing with passion and purpose (though committing too many penalties)? Is that the whole team clogging the shooting lanes, blocking shots and playing sound defense? Was that the same feeble power play from the regular season scoring twice in the first game? Is that Scott Gomez stepping up and playing like the playoff veteran he is? Is that Alex Ovechkin being shutout in the first two games? I guess my eyes don’t deceive me.

What’s not surprising is the play of Henrik Lundqvist. He’s been the best player in the series so far, and if the Rangers are going to win he’s going to have to keep it up. He’s the Rangers’ big advantage. The …

The Rangers made the playoffs. Barely. That’s four years in a row, though. After 81 games, the one thing we’ve learned about them is that they’re inconsistent. With the season on the line, they can play like they did in Boston or like they did vs. Montreal and Philadelphia. It’s anyone’s guess which team shows up for the post-season. The only consistency they’ve had all season is on their special teams play – consistently good on the penalty kill and consistently bad on the power play. With the regular season just about wrapped up, here are some awards for the year:

The Nick Fotiu Award (for overachieving): Ryan Callahan

The Bill Fairburn Award (for knowing his role and doing his job better than anybody else): Blair Betts

The Esa Tikkanen Award (for annoying the crap out of the opposition): Sean Avery

The Marcel Dionne Award (for winding up a hall-of-fame career with the Rangers and having a decent, nothing-special season): Markus Naslund

The Marek Malik Award (for being the worst defenseman on the …

The Knicks and Nets are officially dead so baseball season has arrived just in time. The Mets’ and Yankees’ starting rotations got off to rocky starts, but there are 159 games left. No need to panic, right? Right? On the ice, the Devils and Rangers have both clinched playoff spots. They’re the only two Eastern Conference teams to qualify for the post-season in each of the last four seasons. It looks like they won’t be facing each other in the first round, though, so we won’t have Martin Brodeur/Sean Avery redux. At least not yet. The prize for this week’s Hot Stove Player of the Week is a trip to the playoffs.

Winner

Henrik Lundqvist: The Rangers’ goalie only allowed one goal in each of his team’s games this week. He made one mistake in Boston, which was one too many, but led the team to two crucial wins after that. And he stopped 37 shots last night against the Flyers and saved the game with a handful of outstanding …

The Rangers spent the week fighting for their playoff lives. And they didn’t do a very good job of it. They played one great game and two pretty good ones, but pretty good isn’t good enough when you need points. Who cares how you do it - when you’re tied in the third period, you need to come out of the game with at least a point.

On Saturday against Pittsburgh, the Rangers fell behind 2-0, but rallied with two late first period goals. Fell behind again, and tied it again. Then lost it on a third-period goal by Sidney (insert crybaby joke here) Crosby. The game was an odd-man-rush-fest, with too-much pinching by the defensemen leaving the center of the ice wide open for the Pens. “It’s an in-your-face system that’s constantly evolving,” said Chris Drury.

On Tuesday, the matchup everybody’s been waiting for took place – Fatso vs. Sean Avery. The Rangers plugged the hole in the odd-man-rush dam and played their best game of the year. The Blueshirts …

This past week has proven that the Rangers have a multiple personality problem. Are they:

a) The John Tortorella-inspired team, playing with aggressiveness and gumption, which we saw vs. Buffalo?

b) The lifeless zombies we saw against Ottawa?

c) The tough, shutdown, but low-scoring team we saw against Minnesota?

d) The sloppy disaster we saw last night against Atlanta?

One night they play with passion and do the little things right, the next, they’re reverting to their old ways, not doing anything right and completely falling apart, letting a sure victory slide right out of their hands. Even Tortorella’s a mixed bag – going from inspiritional genious one game, pushing all the right buttons, to questionable moves last night (his choice of shootout players, ice time, etc.). The power play mainly has one personality, and that one is bad. The Rnagers somehow scored three power play goals against Atlanta (in eight chances), but still couldn’t score when they needed it most – in crunch time. They can’t put teams away. Of course, they don’t have …

“Sean gets the puck and five guys on the other team want to kill him.” – Scott Gomez

It’s good to finally have a player on the Rangers you can say that about. Sean Avery’s playing the role of villain on the ice and is quiet as a mouse off it. I was lukewarm on his return to the Rangers, worried that the circus he brings with him would evershadow everything else, but he’s saving his agitation for the games, which is where it belongs. Every player on the opposing team is going out of his way to pummel him, but he’s keeping his head and drawing penalties. Of course, only about one in three are called against him, but that’s life for Avery. He can get elbowed in the face in Montreal right in front of a referee without a whistle blowing, but the officials have no choice but to call some of the punishment he takes. And he’s scoring – four goals, one assist in seven games since …

Here is the third installment of our Superteams Smackdown series (for the first two, click here and here). The Islanders won their first Stanley Cup in only their eighth season. The Rangers won their first in their second season, but nobody remembers that one. Their 1994 Cup win was the Blueshirts’ first in 54 years, so it felt like the first time. If the team that started the Islanders dynasty faced the Rangers Cup-winning team that “will last a lifetime,” who would win? And would somebody from Def Leppard be there to place the Cup upside down?

After winning the President’s Trophy the year before, but being upset by the surprising Rangers, the 1979-80 Islanders finished in second place in the Patrick Division (91 points), but went all the way this time, to win the first of four straight Stanley Cups. They were coached by the great Al Arbour, and the architect of the team was Bill Torrey. Bryan Trottier (42 goals, 62 assists) and Mike Bossy (51 goals) led the offense. Three-time Norris …

“We kind of wet our pants a little there and had that look,” said John Tortorella poetically after the game on Sunday against the Bruins. And Henrik Lundqvist has been suffering from the stomach flu, and threw up between periods last Sunday. So the Rangers are peeing in their pants and throwing up, but isn’t that what playoff-style hockey is all about? The standings change every day, and the Blueshirts are still hanging in there for the eighth spot in the Eastern Conference. Or is it the seventh spot? Or sixth? How about fifth? Anything but ninth.

Apparently Tortorella ripped the team a new one between the first and second periods of last night’s game in Nashville. And it paid immediate dividends, as they scored twice and then went on to win, 4-2. It’s now Tortorella’s way or the highway. Just ask Nikolai Zherdev. He was benched for the last two periods in Nashville. Or Markus Naslund, who’s playing time has diminished. Or consult Ryan Callahan and Sean Avery, who …

Here are the Answers to yesterday’s quiz.

1. Fred Shero coached the 1978-79 Rangers.

2. The Rangers lost to the Montreal Canadiens in the Stanley Cup Finals.

3. They beat the Kings, Flyers and Islanders in the playoffs.

4. Anders Hedberg and Phil Esposito led the team in points, with 78.

5. Esposito led the team in goals, with 42.

6. Nick Fotiu led the team in penalty minutes, with 190.

7. Don Maloney scored 26 points in 28 games after he was called up from the minors during the 1978-79 season.

8. Mike McEwen (58 points) and Ron Greschner (53) were the two Rangers defensemen with more than 50 points.

9. Wayne Thomas and Doug Soetaert backed up John Davidson.

10. Walt Tkaczuk was the only player to appear in the 1972 and 1979 Stanley Cup Finals while playing for the Rangers.

This is the 30th anniversary of the underdog 1978-79 New York Rangers, who made it all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals. See how much you remember about this team. The answers will be posted tomorrow.

1. Who coached the 1978-79 Rangers?

2. What team did they lose to in the Stanley Cup Finals?

3. What teams did they beat in the playoffs to reach the Finals?

4. Who led the team in points during the regular season?

5. Who led the team in goals during the regular season?

6. Who led the team in penalty minutes?

7. What rookie was called up during the regular season and recorded 26 points in 28 games?

8. The team had two defensemen with more than 50 points. Who were they?

9. Who were the two backup goalies to John Davidson?

10. Who was the only player on the team who also played for the Rangers in their last Stanley Cup appearance in 1972?

First of all, we’ll miss Petr Prucha a lot. He always worked hard, and his 90-pound bag-of-bones body was thrown around the ice like a ragdoll, but he always got up, dusted himself off and forechecked like a bastard, and would even get into a fight or two. We’ll kind of miss Nigel Dawes. But we won’t miss Dmitri Kalinin. See ya in the funny papers, Dmitri. But all three are free agents to be and weren’t in the Rangers long-term plans.

They’ve been replaced by Sean Avery, Nik Antropov and Derek Morris. Antropov and Morris, both somewhat of career underachievers, will be free agents also, so the trades consisted of rentals for rentals. Is Avery better than Dawes? Yes. Is Antropov better than Prucha? Yes. Is Morris better than Kalinin? Yes. (Is anybody better than Kalinin? Yes.) So the Rangers improved themselves, and didn’t mortgage the future, unless Prucha turns into a consistent 30 or 40 goal scorer (highly doubtful). They sent Toronto a second-round pick and a conditional …

As expected, Sean Avery is headed back to the New York Rangers.  

The notorious agitator was claimed off re-entry waivers from the Dallas Stars today and comes at a half-price discount.  New York will be on the hook for half of the remainder of the four-year, $15.5 million contract Avery signed with Dallas during the offseason.  

Of course, with zero interest around the league and the team’s payroll already precariously close to the salary cap, the dollar figures hardly amounts to a bargain. It’s another gamble by General Manager-for-life Glen Sather, whose penchant for rolling snake eyes has peppered his nine-yes, NINE-year tenure in New York.

Earlier this season, while serving as an analyst for Canada’s TSN, new Rangers coach John Tortorella stated that Avery “doesn’t belong in the league.”  So we’ve got that going for us.

In all seriousness, I’m curious to see what sort of impact Avery has on this lineup. I think the disruption he could potentially cause in the locker room has been overstated. …