Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

"The righteous man will live through his faith"
For a longest time this season (and i guess somewhere around the time i circled a particular game once NHL released its 2010-2011 NHL schedule) I had a strange feeling that my beloved Ranger's faith will be decided in the last game of the season against their arch-rival across the pond - the New Jersey Devils. The feeling that Devs will try to stick it to the Blue-Shirts was a nagging one to say the least. However once Rangers lost to Atlanta on Thursday and with that placed somebody else in the driving seat of their faith, losing to the Devils suddenly did not seem an option. It would have been just too easy and not like the Rangers at all. Our team wants us to seat at the edge of our seats and worry about the outcome to the last possible minute. So the feeling that the Rangers will lose its game on Sunday was replaced with can Tampa beat the Canes or not.
It is at the time like this you feel that Theory of Evolution must have huge holes in it. It has to. Otherwise if you remove "The Creator" out of the equation and go with Macro Evolution it just does not make a lot of sense.
It could not have been a big-bang type of set of extra ordinary events that places one in a trillion chance that things will get so complex. Just like an orange starts out green and turns itself into an orange color when ripe could not have been done as random event, things that placed the Rangers into the playoffs must have been set in motion way before the last couple of days and by somebody who is far superior that monkey that turns into a human being.
There is a God and he is a Ranger fan.
Honestly looking back to yesterday's games, I do not think Carolina had a chance, and I am not talking about the way they played (which was poorly), I am referring to that it does not matter if they played the best game of the season, Lightning would still win. Though I did not think that way prior to the game, I now realize that all my (and the rest of the Rangers fans) worries were for nothing. It was supposed to happen. And to understand that, we have to trace a series of at the time unrelated events to show that The Creator (and I am not referring to Gary Betman) wanted Rangers in the Stanly Cup Playoffs.
Most of us had a bad feeling before the last night's game. Tampa was locked into the 5th seed and had nothing to play for. Why would they stretch their top horses North of 20 minutes for nothing. And once they announced Mike Smith was to be in goal, casual Ranger fan was not in a good mood. However Smith was out to showcase why Lightning should play him more and being a big goalie that limited Canes chances since they did not have a lot of net to shoot at. And the most important intervention happened way before the season started. Steve Yzerman becoming a GM of Lightning not only set a direction for the team to raise from the ashes to one of the contenders it also guaranteed to the Rangers fans that Tampa will not just skate in their last game. They are to come out and give it an honest effort, just like Stevie Y did all these seasons.
Add to that return of Drury and him scoring the first and possibly most important Rangers goal of the season, and you can see clearly that it has to be something superior that was guiding all these events into placing Rangers into the playoffs.

And now we wait for the fun to start.
good luck to the Rangers in their assault of NHL beasts.