A Pox Upon Whoever Spared The Rangers From Nine-Shot Ignominy

The New York Rangers have had a bad enough season as it is, what with being the worst team in the Eastern Conference and all, but charity like this is frankly unbecoming. They left Madison Square Garden Monday night tying a 71-year-old franchise record for fewest shots in a game with nine in a 2-1 loss to the Ottawa Senators, only to head to Toronto this morning for a game against the second-worst team in the Eastern Conference and finding out that, no, they'd actually attempted 10. In a phrase, damn it.

In the grander scheme, it doesn't much matter, but in a season this forgettable, in a game this bad, why would you try to find an extra shot to make the night seem less abject? Statistical accuracy, sure. A more accurate reflection of reality, fine. Still, in a game so otherwise bereft, finding that 10th shot seems almost antithetical to the tale being told here. The 10th shot must exist, clearly, but to what end?

Nine is just a better number. In fact, any truly valuable league employee would have gone through the tape and taken off a shot or two, just so the numbers could fit the greater truth. The fewest shots taken in a game is actually six, by Toronto, in a series-clinching playoff loss to New Jersey (and we're sure the cheery Toronto mediocracy handled that well) in 2000. In a regular-season game, the record is seven, by Washington in 1978. Frankly, we would have been tempted to eradicate the Rangers' third-period goal by Conor Sheary, but we are clumsy white-collar criminals and surely someone would have noticed if the final score changed. Sheary, for one.