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

moster78 wrote:

Section 312! Row N. Who cares, its a game, and after seeing the Rangers kill them twice there last season, I'm down for more!

so you got these also> 312/ N 7 & 8 ? thats what i was looking at ,....

so the isles lost to ottawa last night.

jason spezza is awesome.
he'd look good in the red white and blue

tom night pitts , sidney and malkin .

and,



facing his former team ,.....

http://www.nypost.com/seven/12072006/sports/rangers/renney_wiping_dust_off_darius_rangers_justin_terranova.htm

RENNEY WIPING DUST OFF DARIUS

By JUSTIN TERRANOVA

GHOST OF A CHANCE: Darius Kasparaitis likely will replace Sandis Ozolinsh on the Rangers' backline tonight vs. the Penguins.


December 7, 2006 -- The odd-man out, at least for the time being, appears to be Sandis Ozolinsh. Darius Kasparaitis skated with Ozolinsh's defense partner Karel Rachunek yesterday at practice, which means they likely will be paired together tonight when the Rangers face the Penguins at the Garden.

"I will see [this morning]," Tom Renney said. "If [Kasparaitis] goes in, we will just remind him just to keep it simple and move the puck quickly and keep connected with the other four guys. We haven't executed particularly well in that regard, so he needs to pay particular attention to that."

Renney has been hesitant to insert Kasparaitis in the lineup and disrupt the chemistry of his defensive pairings. But the Rangers' recent defensive struggles, including an abysmal 7-4 loss to the Islanders on Sunday, apparently has forced Renney's hand.

Kasparaitis will try to use his hard-hitting, aggressive style of play to make a lasting impression and force Renney to keep him in the rotation.

"I know that I have to play good to be in the lineup and work really hard. I want to have a good shift right away. Have a big hit or something and just get the crowd going," Kasparaitis said.

But will that be enough for Renney, who seems loyal to the pairings that got the Rangers out of their early season funk?

"I thought we were playing quite well as a team defensively and I wanted to see if we could get that synchronized and I believe they will again, quite honestly," Renney said. "How that affects Thomas [Pock] and Kaspar at the end of the day remains to be seen."

For now, Kasparaitis has an opportunity to prove this is more than just a short-term solution.

"If you feel that way [like you are being judged day to day], it's tough to play. I felt that way in the beginning of the year and now I am just going to go have fun. It's not one chance, and if you miss, you are out. I think Coach is going to give me more than one chance because I deserve it."

The adjustments are not limited to the defense. Jarkko Immonen has been called up from Hartford to take over second-line center responsibilities for Matt Cullen, who will be moved to the wing.

"I believe we have a guy here [Cullen] that is really pressing," Renney said. "So we want to see if we can develop a level of comfort and confidence with him through that means. As opposed to all the responsibilities of a center iceman."



*

Renney said there is a good chance Henrik Lundqvist will start in goal tonight. He allowed four goals in the first period against the Isles and asked to be taken out of the game . . . Pock will remain on the bench for now. "He is in a holding pattern," Renney said. "He has to be ready to go, he may be the next guy to get a chance."





:eek: :eek: :eek: & Jaarko Immonen ? :eek: excellent !

moster78 wrote:

Its about time they put Darius back in! Now if only they'll put Pock in as well. Screw Rachunek.

Psyched about Immonen. The guy I spoke to over the summer, who used to scout for the Wild, but now is scouting for the Rangers said he was one of the guys we should expect to see more from this season, hopefully he'll prove himself and stick around!

LETS GO RANGERS!!!

yeah this guy broke the record down in Hartford- i think he scored 5 goals in 1 game there . Too bad Ville Nimmenen isntr here anymore- he coulda helped him along.
We got teased with him last season towards the end of regulation season- he scored 2 goals in a few games.

long red wrote:

I just wanted to thrown in a "Let's Go Islanders!". I'll leave now.

yeah they woulda taken over first, all by themselves, had they won tonight
:rolleyes:




Kaspar looked pretty good out there, threw some checks around, no stupid penalties or giveaways( like Ozo )
Henrik is still King when it comes to shootouts ! :eek:

[size=+3]- - - - _/ Lets Go Rangers \_ - - - -[/size]

http://ordinaryleastsquare.typepad.com/blueshirtbulletin/


You've heard it many times -- you have to play the full 60 minutes. You can't win playing just 30, 40, 50 minutes. You have to close the other team out. But if you play a good 40 to 50 minutes and lose, you can beat yourself up for it, but what about the other team? The other team just played a good 10, 15, 20 mintues -- and won! How come they didn't have to play a full 60 minutes to win? Because they won, that's why! That's what happened to the Rangers last night when they came back from a 2-0 deficit in the middle of the third period to beat Pittsburgh in a shootout.

The Rangers certainly can't be happy with the way they played until Blair Betts deflected home a Jason Ward floater off a superb shorthanded play by Michal Rozsival to jump-start the comeback that was completed exactly 90 seconds later when Brendan Shanahan fired a bullet past Marc-Andre Fleury -- and which was parlayed into a win when Shanahan fired another one past Fleury in the shootout. But at least they get to figure out why they were so flat from the vantage point of having won the two points.

"We were too conscious of what we had been working on these past couple of days," said coach Tom Renney afterwards, referring to the focus on defense during practices since last Sunday's defensive meltdown against the Islanders. "I don't have a theory for why we were relatively flat. The one thing we didn't do is give up the way we had against the Islanders. With that, there is transition, energy, attack, and we didn't seem to have that, beyond defending better."

Defending better wasn't enough over two periods. Not when you can't score goals, or even get shots on goal, despite playing a team boasting household names on defense like Alain Nasreddine and Micki Dupont (household names in their own households at least). Not when, despite defending better overall, you have a defender commit as egregious an error as the one Aaron Ward committed in handing Nils Ekman a breakaway that led to his successful penalty shot.

Not when, through the first 35 minutes, your special teams have failed 100%, going a lame 0-for-4 on the power play while giving up that penalty shot as well as a power play goal on the opposition's only man advantage to that point -- Sidney Crosby scored the PPG using the "Red Sea" move, which is where you go one on four and watch the seas part before you, leaving you an open lane to the net. But the special teams came through late, with a shorthander catalyzing a comeback for the second straight game, and a power play goal closing the gap.

One of the reasons the Rangers were so discombobulated offensively was because of the line juggling heading into this game, which got even more confusing when Michael Nylander left during the second period to tend to his wife, who went into labor and delivered their sixth child, a girl, leaving the center with a Brady Bunch of three boys and three girls. In the first period, second line center Jarkko Immonen got the least amount of ice time of any skater on either team, while the newly formed fourth line (Ryan Hollweg centering Petr Prucha and Adam Hall) got more playing time than the fourth line usually gets.

With Nylander out, Jason Ward moved up to center Jaromir Jagr and Martin Straka, and Immonen started getting more playing time. In the third period, Immonen made a key defensive play. All game long, the Pens had been successfully hitting the trailer on their rushes while the Ranger defense scrambled back to even things up against the skaters leading the rush. Immonen picked up a trailer -- Sergei Gonchar -- and kept him from getting a pass in the slot.

Another reason the Rangers were so discombobulated is that they were trying to be way too fancy, making drop passes, extra passes, anything except shooting the puck. "We still try to do things fancy and it just doesn't work in this game," Renney said. "For whatever reasons we try to do too much of the fancy stuff."

But the bottom line is that Henrik Lundqvist rebounded from his last two outings to keep the Rangers close for nearly 50 minutes until they finally started scoring before slamming the door shut on Pittsburgh in the shootout -- two of the three shooters he stopped were the ones who had beaten him in regulation, Ekman and Crosby. Lundqvist is now a perfect 22-for-22 on shootouts this season (four wins), and he believes that his prior two games (Atlanta and Isles) were a blip on the turnaround he experienced through almost all of November.

"When I look back at the last twelve games I played I've been playing pretty good," he said. "Eleven out of twelve have been pretty good. Of course I was disappointed after last game. I don't think I let in any soft ones, but I still think I can play better. It was important for me to get back here and get a good game." He had a good game alright -- he was first star in a game in which Shanahan was a shooting star.

Here's some other stuff Renney had to say before and after the game:

On Darius Kasparaitis, making his first start in a long time and leading the team in both hits and blocked shots with six apiece (Hollweg and Tyutin also had six hits each): "He certainly competed hard. He brought an element to our back end that's been missing with the physical presence. Does that translate to playing against Ottawa [Saturday night]? Possibly. But does it warrant playing more? Yeah. Is it back to back and beyond? I'm not sure. We got to get him into a reasonable flow."

On why Adam Hall was chosen as the third man in the shootout after Shanahan and Cullen (although he never got a chance to go): "He's been very good historically. We've done some research on him and he'd done well in Nashville on shootouts. So we thought he'd be someone that, if you scout out other teams, you wouldn't have anything on Adam from this year." Why Hall and Cullen instead of Jagr and Straka? Who knows. But it worked this time thanks to Shanahan and Lundqvist.

On why Jason Ward got the call to replace Nylander centering the first line: "We practiced that way in the past when Michael's not been there. We've used Wardo with Jags occasionally and they seem to have some chemistry there. If that's the way Strak and Jags are able to play and they like that combination, then I'll work to that if they feel good about it." Translation: Jags asked for Wardo.

On why Petr Prucha thinks he's struggling: "[He thinks] he's gotta score every shift. His measure of success is different than mine. Mine might be more flexible. I just hope for Petr to be a solid contributor and do the little things we need to do as a team. And as he does that, I think the opportunities to score will present themselves. [Pressuring himself to score goals] doesn't affect his work habits or his positional play at all. It might affect to a degree what he tries to do with the puck. He might try to manufacture something that doesn't exist or maybe make an individual play instead of the extraordinary play. I'd rather have to rein a guy in than light a fire."