Marcel Pronovost and Terry Crisp wouldn’t need much rehearsing to team up and cut a record about the Ontario Hockey League Emms Division playoffs.
     The song – which would be a smash hit in Kitchener if nowhere else – would be entitled The Balance and depth of the Rangers.
     Pronovost often sung the tune while his Windsor Spitfires were being thrashed in four straight games in the semifinals.  It didn’t take Crisp long to pick up the lyrics after the Rangers outshot Sault Ste.Marie Greyhounds 48-23 and hammered them 6-2 Sunday afternoon in the opening game of the eight-point Emms final before 5,335 fans – the ninth straight Auditorium crowd of more than 5,000.
     “I said at the start of the year that Kitchener was the team to beat and nothing has happened to change my mind,” Crisp said.
     “They’ve got more depth than any club in the league.  It doesn’t matter which line they send out against you – they will play hard.
     Strangely, all the scoring was done in the final 13 minutes of the second period.  The Rangers erupted for three goals in three minutes to fly ahead 3-0 and from then on were never challenged.
     The win added to the Rangers’ impressive playoff stats in the past two seasons.  They’re now unbeaten in seven games (four wins, three ties) against the Hounds, who they beat for the OHL championship last year.  They’ve gone 17 games without a loss (13 wins, four ties) and feature an OHL playoff chart of 16-2-5.  Their only defeats were to Niagara Falls Flyers in the first playoff round last spring.
     “This is going to be a tough series,” Kitchener coach Joe Crozier predicted.
     “The Soo’s got great goaltending and great defence.  People forget they were in first place for most of the season (until the Rangers overtook them Feb. 11 while on a 12-game unbeaten streak).”
     “I think we’ll have a tougher game Tuesday,” Rangers defenceman Al MacInnis said.
     “They seemed to be tired out there today and they weren’t as tough as I thought they would be.  They were coming off a tough (seven-game) series with Brantford but now they can rest for a day.”
     The Rangers were idle for six days and it showed until they got rolling near the midway mark of the second.
     “I don’t know about any of the other guys, but I found that my timing and passing were off,” MacInnis said.  “It took us a little while to get going.”
     Much has been said about the Soo’s defensive prowess, but the Rangers – who’ve allowed just 10 goals in 5 playoff contests and have lost only three of the last 28 games – are equally as strong defensively.
     Jeff Larmer, the tricky veteran who has scored in all five playoff games, fired two more goals and added an assist to give him nine goals and six assists for 15 points.
     Linemate Brian Bellows also clicked twice, with one of the goals on a power play.  Louis Crawford and Mike Hough added singles while MacInnis and Dave Nicholls each contributed two assists.  Steve Graves and Terry Tait replied for the Hounds.
     The Rangers’ last two goals – in a 12 second span late in the second period – were both flukes.  Hough centered a pass from behind the net and Soo defencemen Dirk Rueter, attempting to scoop the puck away with his glove, knocked it into the goal at 18:46.  At 18:58, with Bellows on the faceoff, the puck squirted high into the air and floated over the shoulder of John Vanbiesbrouck, who seemed to lose sight of the puck before it was too late to make a stab at it.
     Despite the two gifts, the Rangers were robbed on numerous chances and would have won by more if it hadn’t been for Vanbiesbrouck.
 

     Gad that Jeff Larmer’s an inconsiderate son of a gun.
     Imagine, the leading-goalscorer on a Memorial Cup contender goes down for the count after popping in his eighth and ninth goals of the playoffs Sunday afternoon.  He knows he’s not seriously injured but what does he do but lie there stiff-legged on his back as if rigor mortis had already set in.
     Why, it was enough to jolt most of the 5,335 Kitchener Auditorium fans right out of their Saturday night handovers.
     Coach Joe Crozier did a quick hop, step and jump to the end of the bench for a closer look, his 53-year old ticker no doubt palpitating wildly as visions of cracked ankles, fractured tidbits and twisted knees ruined what had been a most pleasant afternoon.
     I mean how often does a coach get to enjoy the luxury of a 6-2 second period lead in a playoff game.
     What’s annoying is that Larmer knew when Sault Ste. Marie defenceman Dirk Reuter cracked him across the back of the leg early in the third that it was nothing more than a knotted muscle.  He’d had a similar injury once before in major bantam.
     So why didn’t the blond, curly-haired Peterborough native give a thumb’s up sign or a wave or something to indicate that everything was OK?  Well, as the 19-year old Larmer later explained, his entire left leg had gone numb from Reuter’s unexpected swat.
     Through he knew what the injury was, he was in too much discomfort to worry about alleviating the worst fears of the crowd.  A hearty massage by trainer Les Bradley did the trick, however, and oh what collective sigh of relief when the superb little winger finally got to his feet.
     “I had no idea what was wrong until he told me his leg had gone numb,” Bradley said.  “All I did was work the leg to release the nerve.  It might feel a little sore for a while but he’ll be all right.
     A 51-goal regular season scorer who has added nine playoff goals in five games, Larmer has been forechecking zealously back of the Soo net prior to getting thwacked by Reuter as the play moved out of the Hounds zone.
     Interference was the call be referee Bill McCreary who might have seen Larmer tumble and wondered why.
     Trevor Shilston a Ranger scout of long standing, saw Reuter swing his stick at Larmer and thoaught, “oh no.”
     “That’s the first time I’ve ever seen Dirk Rueter do something like that,” Shilston said.  “He’s not that kind of kid.  He’s just a good tough competitor.”
     Rangers’ hard-hitting defenceman Joel Levesque agreed.  He tangled with Reuter with less than four minutes to go, the two of them departing with roughing minors and 10-minute misconducts.  But it had nothing to do with the Larmer incident.
     None of the Rnagers seemed overly upset about Reuter’s indiscretion, not even Larmer himself.  Though he talked about the injury, he exhibited no anger.  Maybe those two second period goals; a minute and 45 seconds apart, pacified him.
     They were a couple of beauts.  Not from an artistic stand point, mind you.  But if you appreciate watching a natural goalscorer do his thing, you might have developed goose bumps.
     Take the first one, a rebound off a low Dave (Midnight) Nicholls shot.  It looked simple enough.  But a mediocre goalscorer would never tuck it in high from such close quarters.
     Larmer made it look easy.  Presto, a 2-0 Rnager lead at 9:01 of the seonc!  Less than two minutes later he was at it again, stealing the puck fro defenceman Bruce Bell and breaking in alone on goaltender John Vanbiesbrouck.
     Vanbiesbrouck, who spent a month with the New York Rangers in mid season, actually beat Larmer as he attempted to deke.  But as the Ranger forward fell while attempting to shift he reached out and tapped the puck past the sprawling netminder to make it three zip.
     If Larmer could have done that a few more times during his eight games with the Colorado Rockies earlier this year (a goal and an assist), he’d have laced on his skates for the last time in Denver Saturday night.
     Larmer also picked up an assist Sunday, helping out on Brian Bellows’ first of two goals late in the second.  Again, it was a vintage Larmer play, the puck squirting to Bellows after Larmer had dug it loose in heavy traffic near the Soo crease.
     Despite the four-goal victory, Larmer expects a tough series from the Hounds who missed an eighth game with the scrappy Brantford Alexanders by inches.  The A’s lost 3-2 in the Soo Friday night.
     “I thought they looked tired today,” Larmer said.  “But they’ll get better.  We didn’t play so well ourselves in that first period.  We were a little tight.  All we did is dump and chase.