Get To Know a Ranger: Nik Antropov

Looks like he’s all regular season and no playoffs. If you rearrange the letters in “Antropov”, does it spell “Borschevsky”?

If we matched d-men on forwards, yeah, we’d have to worry about that. But to my knowledge, Bruce doesn’t.

Looks like Antropov hasn’t been to the playoffs since 2004? Has he just been on a bad team, or what?

Just kidding, PPP. Actually been enjoying your blog, particularly your taking the piss out of Ottawa.

As for who’s going to take the body on Antropov…wellllll…Erskine, Morrisonn and Mike Green would all seem to have the size to do it. Whether they will, in fact, actually take the initiative to do so is a bit of an open question.

Best thing would be to play a lot in the Rangers’ zone, and remove the need to do so.

In my fantasy world he’s Leafs’ double agent who’ll destroy Lundqvist in the keymoment, Semin scores, Caps to the second round and Antro back to Leafs.

I don’t have much educational to offer but your assessment of the Caps D made me laugh. Actually, Erskine has been better since he came back from that concussion. Maybe the synapses got all scrambled around but he’s been making fewer boneheaded plays now, and this is coming from someone who was an Erskine-hater. Jurcina, well, he can be horrible and takes too many penalties. Not sure I’d call Poti soft though, more like injured. Morrisonn might be an option. I guess the question is, regardless of who the Caps put on him, can Antro be a difference maker in this series? Of course, you could ask that about the entire Rangers offense and they still manage to score goals.

P.S. You, Chemmy and the whole crew are hilarious. Love PPP so when the Leafs make the playoffs, and they will someday, I’ll be on the bandwagon.

Schultz on big men = win. He pretty much shut down Malkin the last two games vs. the Pens, so I don’t see Antropov giving him a hard time. It’s sort of the one time where his allergies to body checks help him…he never makes positional mistakes on the power forwards who thrive if you give them an inch.

This guy has good size and good talent, but he is not a fast skater at all. He’s not in the Jurcina class of ultra-slow (the only other Cap in this class was Reekie, but he knew where to be to minimize the impact of lack of speed.)

Schultz is the perfect guy to deal with Antropov, their speed is about the same. The issue is will he get physical enough with Antropov to keep him ineffective. I think he can.

One last thing. Antropov tries to play in the way Russians do, in that he’s not afraid of carrying the puck in front of his own net, and clearing it up the middle. The problem for him is that although he is ethnic Russian, he grew up learning to play hockey in Kazakhstan, and was not trained as well in how the Russian game is played. He will make mistakes that opponents can capitalize (hee) on….