WHEN Mike Dunham goes between the pipes for this afternoon’s Garden match against the Thrashers, it will mark the 18th time in the last 19 games that Dan Blackburn has watched from the bench as a backup. One start plus one relief appearance equaling 85:67 of hockey over the last six weeks for a 20-year-old. Is this any way to develop the goaltender of the future?
Of course Bryan Trottier is riding Dunham as hard and as far as he can. Who wouldn’t? Since coming from Nashville, Dunham has given the Rangers their most consistent and reliable goaltending since the first half of the 1999-2000 season, before all the injuries began to strike Mike Richter. It’s true of course that Dunham has benefited from his team’s newfound dedication to safety-first hockey, but it is equally true that the Blueshirts have benefited from the goaltender’s deep-in-the-net positioning, stand-up style and ability to move the puck.
The Rangers are 5-1 in their last six with Dunham and 8-3-1 in their last 12, the latter a string in which he has permitted two or fewer goals nine times.
But what about Blackburn, who did his very best in starting 18 straight from Nov. 7 through Dec. 14? Sending him back to Kootenay of the WHL to finish the season is obviously out of the question. Sending him to Hartford for a conditioning period remains possible, but the time for that has probably come and gone. If Glen Sather was going to make that request, this was the week for it, what with the Wolf Pack playing five home games in eight nights between last Sunday and tomorrow.
“It would be their decision to ask me to go,” Blackburn, who had a four-game stint in Hartford last year, said in Nashville on Thursday. “Whether it would help me, I couldn’t say now. I could tell you after, but not now.”
Following this afternoon’s match, the Rangers are in Washington tomorrow afternoon, in Atlanta on Tuesday, then home for Colorado on Thursday before breaking for All-Star weekend. When it was suggested that Blackburn probably wouldn’t get one of those games, Trottier dissented.
“Not necessarily,” said Trottier. “I trust Danny. He did himself and our organization proud during that stretch in November and December. I don’t have doubts. If Danny plays, no matter what happens, I won’t second-guess myself. I won’t second-guess him, either.”
Trottier said that he’s only spoken to Blackburn a few times in the last six weeks. Which maybe is why, when the goaltender was asked on Thursday if he knew whether he’d play today or tomorrow afternoon in Washington, he responded: “I don’t know much of anything.”
The Rangers don’t have a full-time goaltending coach. Sam St. Laurent, whom everyone in the organization appears to like, comes in and out. That’s not good enough. Blackburn needs someone to work with him, to talk to him, to listen to him, every single day. It’s crazy, not to give this organizational jewel the most support possible. Who cares how mature he acts or how well he plays for his age? He’s 20, for goodness sakes, on his own, essentially swept out the back door with the cat for the last six weeks. This is unacceptable.