Well, at least it wasn’t boring, eh?

Apparently, Sunday afternoon’s game at the Garden between the Rangers and the Flyers was replaced with a match-up between a bunch of angry 14-year-olds.

That’s the way it looked, at least.

This was as sloppy and irresponsible a game that I’ve seen two teams play in the “new” NHL, especially when it comes to Tom Renney’s monstrously defensive post-lockout Rangers. I really thought Renney was going to have a heart attack during the first intermission. Luckily for the team (and the bench boss’ health), the Blueshirts came away with both points, though it sure would have been pleasing to deny the Flyers the point they got.

You do have to give the coach credit, though, because it was his decision to replace Henrik Lundqvist with Steve Valiquette at the start of the second period that probably settled this team down enough so they wouldn’t discombobulate.

Renney didn’t replace Lundqvist because the King was playing that bad, although it wasn’t Henke’s best performance, but rather because he knew that inserting Valiquette would cause the rest of the team to, at the very least, be a tad more responsible. It didn’t hurt that the backup played pretty well, though.

Still, the irresponsibility on the part of the Rangers, especially their defense, was at times jarring. I’d be remiss if I, once again, didn’t point the first finger at the Garden faithful’s newest whipping boy, Christian Backman. The guy was being booed in his second game with the team. What an achievement, huh?

I think the real reason the Rangers got this guy wasn’t to add depth because of Paul Mara’s injury. The secret strategy is to throw this guy to the proverbial wolves, increasing Marek Malik’s standing with the crowd and thus his confidence, simply by default. By the way, Malik’s been a lot better for the past few weeks, though he had a couple of brain farts against Philly, too.

Back to…Backman, though. Now, to be fair, he did score his first as a Ranger and was even responsible for one or two very nice rushes up the ice. His play defensively, though, was once again quite poor. I try watching the guy for an entire shift and its like the guy hasn’t learned the first thing about a defenseman’s job in terms of positioning. Backman again took a couple of stupid penalties, one of which cost the Rangers a goal against.

Speaking of first goals, Freddy Sjostrom made a much better impression in his first home game as a Ranger than he did on the road. His debut goal wasn’t pretty, but his willingness to go to the net, battle and not give up on the play was certainly a welcome sight. Most importantly, he seems like he can add that offensive punch to that fourth line that has been missing from this team all year. Even the fourth line has to chip in offensively, at least once in a while. Sjostrom made a couple of decent defensive plays throughout the game, as well.

The guys who really stood out for me today, though, were Ryan Callahan and Nigel Dawes. This was a game right up Cally’s alley, since he plays a fast-paced, hit anything that moves game every night, but Dawes isn’t always as aggressive. He was in this contest, though. Dawes finished all of his checks and created a lot of scoring chances. His goal in the shootout was a beauty. Go watch the highlights again. The move he made on Martin Biron was subtle but, in my opinion, one of the nicest I’ve seen all year.

I’ve harped as much as I can about how great Dubinsky, Avery and Jagr have been playing lately, so I won’t go into it too much, but let’s just say they didn’t let up this game, either. They didn’t show up on the score sheet aside from a Jagr assist, but they were all flying. Jagr continued to make the kind of moves he hasn’t shown until lately. They had a few really excellent forechecking shifts, too.

Bottom line, the team can be happy they walked away with two points after such a wild game, but with a home-and-home against the Fishsticks coming up, now is not the time to get sloppy.