It takes time for the bacon to sizzle

Matt Puempel, a first round draft pick of the Ottawa Senators and the newest Rangers'  offensive dynamo.

There were the doubters. As there always are. The skeptics who watched the pre-season and the nervous ones who thought that their one-win-in-six-tries warmup would have the OHL's Kitchener Rangers reeling before the puck was even dropped on opening night.

Questions surrounded the team entering their commemorative 50th anniversary, which had the public relations team working overtime (PR queen Michelle Fortin created the ubiquitous "50" crest donning the left shoulder of the team's sweaters) just as much as it had Rangers' coach Steve Spott trying to live up to his big talk entering the season.

Spott is never one to spew more words than necessary like a certain GM running the Leafs down the 401, so it was a little surprising when the skipper uttered words like "memorial cup year." You can't do that too soon unless you know you have your ducks in a row. And no one does this early.

But emerging through the disastrous pre-season and the fog and the mist is a team that's transpiring to be a frightful combination of work ethic and skill. The work ethic's always been there. Has been for 11 years now. The question everyone was asking themselves and their brother, was does this team have enough skill to compete with the Londons and the Plymouths and the same old, same old who are brought up when talking about the monarchy of the OHL's west.

I still don't think they're within the same breath muttered by Spott's fast talk, but the tools are there.

Matt Puempel, a forward, and a former CHL rookie of the year is the prized addition of the off-season. A somewhat cheaper (though still not cheap) trade than many expected partly due to the timing- summer's not prime trade territory, partly due to Puempel having his sights set on Kitch-town before he was even drafted into the O, like most players are guilty of.

So when Puempel was existent but invisible in the pre-season, the red flags shot up.

A pressing question no more. After two opening weekend wins, one of which saw the left winger notch two and gather a generous empty netter in the other, Puempel has been the creative spark left by the graduation of the pint-sized pivot Michael Catennaci.

Sure, there's the usual crop of names when mentioning the Rangers' offensive prowess, three of which have NHL scouts drooling nightly in Ryan Murphy, Tobias Rieder and Radek Faksa, now property of Carolina, Edmonton and Dallas respectively.

But that instinctual, primal function of making something of nothing only really resides in Murphy. And Murphy, the defenceman can only do so much because Murphy, the defenceman is responsible for another whole half of the ice; his own.

In two games, Puempel has shown that creativity. And the skill to back it up. A Mats Sundin-esque backhander over Sarnia's JP Anderson's shoulder and a 5-on-3 rebound drive shot in with as much authority as a Zdeno Chara blueline bomb has the new face lighting up his new mates' mugs.

When you win when they matter, no one asks questions. And it'll stay that way until Spott decides if this is the list of combatants he wants to go to war with at the trade deadline. Hint: it's not, but his assets in the draft pick cupboard are slim, so for now, there's not much he can do about it.

The chemistry will come. But with Puempel looking every bit the CHL rookie of the year of old, it'll come that much faster.

Rangers Open Season with 5-2 Victory over Spirit

The monkies were flying tonight.

Sadly, the hats weren't.

Shedding the proverbial primate on season opening night for the Kitchener Rangers included oversized forward Tyler Randell and incoming German whiz, Tobias Rieder.

Perhaps even Gabriel Landeskog could say he threw the monkey off his back with a hat trick performance in a 5-2 Rangers victory over the Saginaw Spirit in front of 6, 397 fans who showed up for the opening night festivities.

Randell, who knows he must have a splendid campaign to offset a very forgettable season last year in which he battled through a nagging back injury (the monkey was too heavy?) needs to produce.

The Boston Bruins expect it. That contract won't re-sign itself.

Consider that first goal out of the way. It couldn't have been timelier for his teammates either- the 19 year-old scored what turned out to be the game's deciding marker with just 11 minutes left in the contest, and Randell and his teammates never looked back from there.

Perhaps inspired by his fellow forward's simian-ridding tendencies, Rieder who was brought in to provide goal-scoring gumption, proved he too can clear his largest initial hurdle in the Ontario Hockey League, and scored his first goal in North America with 2:50 left to seal the deal for the blueshirts.

Rieder, who was welcomed to the league early on in the game by a crushing check as he made his way around the net to collect the puck, learned very early on, that protecting the body is of paramount importance in the O.

The German wobbled his way to the bench, and woke up in a hurry, finishing the night with a goal and two assists.

Fellow import Swede, and donning the 'A' for the first time, signalling his assistant captain duties, Landeskog, meanwhile had himself a night to remember.

If there were any doubters that the Swedish sophomore sensation couldn't live up to his billing as a bona fide top line scorer, "Gabe" quelled those nay-sayers with a hat trick despite top linemates Jeff Skinner and Jeremy Morin away, reporting for their NHL teams.

Sadly, the only headgear that was tossed in tribute to the trick was a lone promotional Rangers plastic helmet given to the fans during a recent playoff run.

While that line did dominate in the pre-season, Landeskog proved he could put up more than respectable numbers without his superstar sniper brethren, thank you very much.

If he wasn't already coach Steve Spott's choice to succeed ex-Ranger Dan Kelly as captain, his case just became that much stronger to be the Rangers' first European captain in its 48-year history.

The Rangers will need him to continue his hot start. They will need all the offensive help they can find to replace the 97-goal gap that Skinner and Morin may leave if they stick in the big show.

While the game was tied for most of 50 minutes, the last 10 proved favourable, as the boys in blue shed their opening night jitters and peppered former Rangers goalie Mavric Parks with 45 shots, with three beating him in the last 11 minutes.

Parks was sharp, but couldn't match Kitchener's just-returned netminder of their own, Brandon Maxwell.

Maxwell's 35 saves on 37 shots was a far cry from the 6-5 wild opening day win, one year ago in a see-saw affair to the Kingston Frontenacs. In that game, whoever shot last, won.

Josh Shalla and Michael Sgarbossa were the only Spirit to beat Maxx on this night.

The Rangers now head to Guelph on Sunday for a divisional rival date with the Storm at 2:00.

Now that the nerves and monkeys are out of the way, the Rangers are hoping that while they may not want to have to use them, the same late game heroics prevail throughout the course of the long and arduous 68-game grind to the show.

Sixty-seven left, boys.