B R O A D W A Y***B L U E S H I R T S

Bathgate66

Zhederev gives the puck away
as a result of the giveaway,the opponent scores a goal,...

Zhederev sits the rest of the game.


aparently Torts ripped them all[ a new ass during the 1st intermiission,...

wouldve loved to be a fly on the wall in that lockroom,. !



After watching his team fall behind during a tentative and shy first period, John Tortorella let his club know that enough was enough. The message got through as the Blueshirts rallied for a 4-2 victory over the Predators last night in Nashville.

The Rangers scored two goals in the second period and another in the third to move up from ninth place to seventh in the Eastern Conference.

Tortorella, who benched forward Nikolai Zherdev for the rest of the game after his first-period turnover led to a goal, refused to reveal what he told his players.

Scott Gomez, who scored the tying goal for the Rangers and helped set up two others, said the message was an eye-opener. The Rangers are 4-2-1 since Tortorella replaced fired Tom Renney.

"He wasn't happy after the first period," Gomez said. "It has been a while since I've heard a speech like that. We were playing too timid. Nashville had the 2-1 lead and we thought it was over.

"He let us know what it is going to be like from now on. He lit into all of us. We were feeling sorry for ourselves and he spotted that right away. He called us out. I thought we responded well."

Henrik Lundqvist, who sat out Monday's loss at Carolina because of a stomach ailment that has bothered him for about 10 days, stopped 19 shots for his 30th win of the season. He is the first to win 30 games in his first four seasons and the first Rangers goalie to do in any four-season stretch.

"It is a great feeling to be part of history," Lundqvist said. "The first four years have been great. When I look back on my career I will definitely think about this accomplishment. Part of this is because of my teammates, as well."

Lundqvist also was inspired by Tortorella's talk.

"He let us know how we should play and how we should have played in the first period," he said. "It is pretty obvious to us that when we get more involved, play more physical and go after teams that we are a better team. ''

Sean Avery scored his first goal since being picked up by the Rangers off waivers last week from Dallas.

*

Alf Pike, a member of the Rangers' 1940 Stanley Cup championship team, who later coached the club has died. He was 91.

Pike, who spent six seasons as a Rangers player and two as coach, died March 1 in Calgary, Alberta. He was one of two surviving members of the 1939-40 team, the last Rangers club to capture the Cup before the 1994 squad won it, according to the team's Web site.

Pike's death leaves 95-year-old Clint Smith as the only living member of the 1940 team who spent the entire season with the club. Smith is also the oldest living Rangers player.

Jwmcc

About time they have a coach like that. The "But we all like each other" locker room days are over!

greaticedtea

thank you for posting that story about tortorella getting tough. i liked renney but hearing that story about tortorella got me pumped that they have a coach who wont take no bs.

rival.

great interview with pat dupuzzo during the first intermission.

rival.

alright, zherdev saw the bench last game because of poor play, when is torts going to sit redden's ass down?

responsible for 2 of the flyers goals. unbelievable.

Bathgate66

still holding onto that 8th playoff slot as of tonight.
hopefully we can compete aganst the flyers with a regulation " W " tomorrow.
I hate the games on NBC.

Jwmcc

Bump.

Huge two points on the line tonight. Though these late season games up in Montreal have traditionally been a nightmare for the Blueshirts...C'MON RANGERS!

Rygar

Jwmcc wrote:

Bump.

Huge two points on the line tonight. Though these late season games up in Montreal have traditionally been a nightmare for the Blueshirts...C'MON RANGERS!

haha, haven't been paying attention the Habs, lately, eh?
Enjoy the 2!

igotid88

Rygar wrote:

Jwmcc wrote:

Bump.

Huge two points on the line tonight. Though these late season games up in Montreal have traditionally been a nightmare for the Blueshirts...C'MON RANGERS!

haha, haven't been paying attention the Habs, lately, eh?
Enjoy the 2!

I don't think that matters. We've had 5-0 leads blown against them.

Rygar

igotid88 wrote:

Rygar wrote:

Jwmcc wrote:

Bump.

Huge two points on the line tonight. Though these late season games up in Montreal have traditionally been a nightmare for the Blueshirts...C'MON RANGERS!

haha, haven't been paying attention the Habs, lately, eh?
Enjoy the 2!

I don't think that matters. We've had 5-0 leads blown against them.

Pretty easy prediction. SO was a surprise though.
Montreal has been playing themselves onto the golf course since December.

rival.

yeah, the SO was a gift brought to you by lundqvist. what a bad goal.

antropov is an animal. i like.

Rygar

singularity wrote:

yeah, the SO was a gift brought to you by lundqvist. what a bad goal.

antropov is an animal. i like.

You mean Frankenleaf.
I've never seen so clumsy a fuckhead get so many points in my life.
I expected 3 periods exactly like the third, so it was a pleasant memory for golf season.

HailHailVitalogy

I think Antropov is exactly what the Rangers needed. A big mother fucker who skates towards the net.

I gotta tell you, I've always disliked Gomez, especially during that losing streak he was absolutely awful. But now him being a part of a speedy offense, he's getting points and I like it.

Henrik's 2 on 1 save last night was unbelievable.

If the season ended today and we had to play the Caps, I think it could go either way. The Rangers have gotten a lot of shots on goal recently and Washington's goaltending isn't great, but their defense is incredible. I wouldn't mind seeing Henrik vs Ovi for 7 games, but I don't think we would win because theres also Semin, Backstrom, Federov, Green, Braschear (or however you spell his name) is a fan favorite here in DC, it's incredible...he was such a LOSER when he was in Philly.

That said, I kind of hope we seed 7 to play the Devils in a 7 game series. We would win that, we'll get to Marty again. After that...I don't want to play Philly or Pittl

Bathgate66

HailHailVitalogy wrote:

I think Antropov is exactly what the Rangers needed. A big mother fucker who skates towards the net.

I gotta tell you, I've always disliked Gomez, especially during that losing streak he was absolutely awful. But now him being a part of a speedy offense, he's getting points and I like it.

Henrik's 2 on 1 save last night was unbelievable.

If the season ended today and we had to play the Caps, I think it could go either way. The Rangers have gotten a lot of shots on goal recently and Washington's goaltending isn't great, but their defense is incredible. I wouldn't mind seeing Henrik vs Ovi for 7 games, but I don't think we would win because theres also Semin, Backstrom, Federov, Green, Braschear (or however you spell his name) is a fan favorite here in DC, it's incredible...he was such a LOSER when he was in Philly.

That said, I kind of hope we seed 7 to play the Devils in a 7 game series. We would win that, we'll get to Marty again. After that...I don't want to play Philly or Pittl

i was at Bathgate & Howell night, where the NYRs played agaisnt Toronto before the trade deadline-

I remember saying to myself " holy fuck that Antropov is one big MFer " .

xavier mcdaniel

I have to say that was one of the best games of the year. It was really a fun up and down game and the fact the Rangers actually won a type of game like that is nice, considering they wouldn't have won this type of game earlier this year.

rival.

agreed... last night was a very fun game to watch. had a little bit of everything. what moves by callahan on the break.

anyone notice redden finally decided to start playing hockey?

Bathgate66

RIP
Walt Poddubny

looking good as of late, lets keep it rolling.
watched hockey all day , penguins-0 flyers

then the devils,

now our team.

Lets Go Rangers

Bathgate66

ugh

The Rangers have certainly played a lot better in the last dozen games than in the disastrous dozen that preceded John Tortorella's hiring. Their 7-4-1 record in those games is obviously a far sight better than the 2-7-3 slump that cost Tom Renney his job. So when they play like they did last night in dropping a 2-1 decision to Ottawa at the Garden, in a manner so reminiscent of the last days of the Renney era, you have to look at it as the new exception rather than the old rule. Just as they rebounded from a similar loss in Carolina, there is no reason to believe that they can't rebound from this one, despite scoring only one goal, despite taking the collar on the power play with the game in the balance, despite giving up a quick third period goal to fall behind, and all the other things that were the norm in January and February.

"The game is not always going to be easy," Tortorella said after this one. "This isn’t supposed to be easy. You're not going to always be at your best." But after saying that last night in winning, the coach was hoping to see his team move forward tonight rather than backwards. "I was hoping we'd make a step even though we weren’t at our best. We're in the third period 1-1, we needed to win that period, and we didn’t. Hopefully in those situations, if it arises again, we'll be able to answer it. That's how you grow as a team. Am I going to overreact to it? No. We're going to go back and try to do the same things we've done where we've won and hopefully get better at it. That's all you can do. We're going to have a short term memory and go back to work tomorrow with tape work and we'll get ready for Minnesota."

The Rangers weren't all there from the start, despite getting an early goal from Brandon Dubinsky (his first in 24 games) off some hustle from Ryan Callahan (what else is new?). But they ended up with only six shots on goal in the first period despite getting three power plays, missing the net nine times and having seven other shots blocked. "The game was sloppy by both teams," Tortorella said. "It was one of those games where you're about to make a play and you can't get it done, you're trying to make a pass and it's picked off, you turn the puck over when you should be making an easy play." No one believed that playing back-to-back games had anything to do with it. "I don't think that had anything to do with it," Sean Avery said. "They played back-to-back [too]. We could've beared down a little more -- we should've played a better game." "I don't think we were tired," Henrik Lundqvist said.

The power play hurt the cause, not only unable to get a goal but unable to get anything going, going 0-for-5 and failing to score six-on-five in the final minute and a half. "We definitely had our chances to get the game going on the power play," Lundqvist said. "But for some reason we had a tough time getting the power play going tonight. We had opportunities on the power play to tie the game but they played pretty well with their PK. In a game like this, you hope to get one on the power play." "Sometimes that's the difference," Avery said. "It wasn't the difference tonight because we didn't score. We certainly have to bear down as a group and start capitalizing on opportunities cause that's what wins games down the stretch and that's what wins playoff games." "It would have been nice if we got a P.P. along the way," Chris Drury said. "They pressured the puck well -- they sent four guys and we didn't respond too good to it. We had to get it to the other side of the ice and we never got it over there."

"With the power play, It's not so much your percentage, it's scoring at a key time, especially this time of year," Tortorella said. "In a close game, a 2-1 game, a power play goal would be very important. We didn't get it done tonight. When you get to the third period and it's 1-1, that's where you need to find a way to grind one out. We gave up a goal -- I don't think we played the two on two properly. I think it's the right play by Scotty on the turnover at their blue line, but he leaves a tail on it. It's the right idea, but it ends up being a costly turnover. But we need to try to find a way to tie it up and we couldn't. We had a couple of opportunities -- Nik [Antropov] hit a skate with a wide open net. Bottom line, you're not going to win games scoring one goal. I thought we were stale offensively -- we just weren't getting much offense going at all."

Fredrik Sjostrom said the team let down after the Senators tied the score in the second period. "After their goal, we got a little down," he said. "We came back pretty good in the third, but for some reason the efficiency wasn't there today. We created chances, but we weren't calm. When we had the opportunity, we didn't capitalize -- that's the big difference. We were on them, we were forechecking good, but the last part wasn't there -- you gotta put the puck in the net. We'd like to have this one back, but this one's over -- there's not time to dwell on these. We'll go tomorrow and try to correct the things we didn't do too well, back on it. We still have a good feeling -- we know we've been playing good hockey lately. We just have to rebound -- start a new streak."

And thus the beat went on, with everyone believing that this one just needed to go into the history books and all attention turned to the next game. "It clearly wasn't our night, but it's over, and back at it tomorrow," Drury said. "I felt we actually got better as the game went on, we had some chances in the third. Obviously, we want to win them all and play our best, every single one down the stretch. There are going to be nights when you don’t have it. The key is how you respond to it and how you bounce back." "We didn't play our best game by any means," Avery said. "But you aren't going to win every game. We're going to get back to work tomorrow and just get back on track here." Unlike the many times we've heard this refrain this season, this time it sounds less like a promise broken than a promise to be fulfilled.

One Ranger, however, does not deserve the benefit of any doubt tonight. That's former Senator Wade Redden. When Tortorella said the two-on-two wasn't played well, he can't have been talking about Derek Morris, who stuck with his man as two Sens criss-crossed -- he was talking about Redden, who drifted over lazily toward the goal scorer and screened Lundqvist as the shot rang off the post. And for all of his new rules, here's one for Tortorella to consider -- how about no fraternizing with the opposition after games in the hallway between locker rooms, where Redden was holding court with Alfredsson, Heatley, and a third Senator after helping his former mates win the game.

Here are some early links -- game reports: Newsday, Record, Daily News, Journal News, Times, Post, NYR.com, AP, and Ottawa Citizen; more from the Record, Newsday, and Inside Shots; pre-game, in-game, and post-game updates from Ranger Rants here and here, Rangers Report here and here, Blue Notes here and here, and Game On! -- they include a bit of news on Rozsival, who limped home under his own power and is slated to undergo an MRI tomorrow. The Wolf Pack lost yesterday -- see Howlings and WP.com. Hockey's Future has a spring update on the Rangers' top 20 prospects, and Prospect Park has an update on how some of them did in Sunday playoff action.





i hope rozsivals knee is okay,...

Bathgate66

i cant believe theres only like 10 games remaining,
wow this year flew by

Jwmcc

Safe to say tonight is the last "gimme" game vs. Atlanta. Here is the rest of the schedule:

@PIT
vs.NJ
@CAR
@BOS
vs.MTL
vs.PHI
@PHI

If the Rangers win tonight and Florida loses to the Flyers without a losers' point, that puts them seven points clear of the drop zone with seven to go. I'm wondering if Valiquette will ever get a start under Tortorella or is he just going to ride the King until April 12th.

C'MON YOU BLUESHIRTS!
Jw