Brendan Shanahan tweaked something at the end of the second period and won’t return.

It looks like Petr Prucha will jump into his spot.

More when I have it…

His junior season now over, Bobby Sanguinetti is headed to Hartford for the remainder of the Wolf Pack season.

It’s the second stint in Hartford for the Rangers No. 1 draft pick from 2006. He had three assist in five regular season games and one assist in  a playoff game last year.

It’ll be interesting to see how he fares this time around, and whether he looks like he can make the Rangers out of training camp next fall.

I would imagine how he looks will have some sort of say in what the team does with its host of unrestricted free agent defensemen at season’s end. Between Michal Rozsival, Marek Malik, Paul Mara, and Jason Strudwick, it’s doubtful the Rangers are going to keep all four. And if Sanguinetti looks like he can contend for a job next year, the team might pare that list down even more.

Turns out the boot on Colton Orr’s foot I spied this morning was not the Rangers enforcer heading off to the ski slopes. Instead it was evidence of a fractured toe that is going to knock the right wing out of the lineup indefinitely.

Strangely enough, Orr first injured the toe when he blocked a shot a few games back, but it was after walking on it that the bone randomly fractured.

Naturally this means Orr will be out tonight and probably both games against the Islanders, although Tom Renney said he still had aspirations of having him for the start of the playoffs (if there are playoffs). In the meantime you’ll see more of Petr Prucha,
who while not necessarily a candidate to overpower George Laraque, at least makes that fourth line more of a scoring threat.

It also means that Tom Renney would have the option of using Prucha on the power play, although that doesn’t sound like the plan for now.

For the record, there are no plans to call up Josh Gratton from Hartford.

More in a bit…

There is no need reminding the Rangers the importance of tonight against the Penguins. If they weren’t looking at TSN on the TV in their workout room or scanning the newspaper, then they needed only to look at the serious expressions on their own faces at today’s optional morning skate.

Hey, Toots, pass the Tums!

No, the season doesn’t technically ride on tonight. But it’s close enough, and everyone knows it.

“I think there’s a fine line, but I think it’s a line  we’re definitely capable of walking and having success with,” Tom Renney said of the team’s back now being against the wall. “There’s been a number of times this year when we’ve needed this game and it’s presented a certain challenge to us and we’ve risen to that challenge.

“Not to suggest yesterday wasn’t one of those games but the dynamic is what it was. I think our experienced people will be important to us tonight. I think our preparation and attention to detail will be important to us. What we’ve got to be careful of is that we don’t overprepare that it brings us to a standstill.”

Meanwhile, some notes:

No, really, I love the suggestion the reason I haven’t criticized Sidney Crosby is out of fear of repercussions.

What exactly do you think happens—one cross word on No. 87 and Gary Bettman himself comes to confiscate your laptop?

Look, I’m in agreement that Sid the Kid has, shall we say, a flair for the dramatic, and I’ll even concede that may have had an outcome on the game today (that said, if any of you for a second wouldn’t want Crosby on your team, you are Chris Simon-crazy). But I also stand by my original premise that Pittsburgh’s impressive arsenal of skill players is problematic for a Rangers defensive corps that can occasionally be caught flat-footed
Do I think the Rangers could beat the Penguins in a seven-game series? Absolutely. But I also think one of the Rangers’ great strengths this season has been their ability to manage the tempo of games. With the Penguins, and especially with Sir Laurence Olivier at center, that isn’t always the case.

But let’s see if tomorrow is a different story….

Maybe the Rangers have a winning record against Pittsburgh this season. But the first period today illuminated why they would be better served avoiding a first round match-up against the Penguins.

There’s just too much firepower there to contend with, and it obviously has the potential to pull the Rangers off their games.

Of course the other side to consider is the Rangers would have to deal with the Penguins at some point. And maybe they’d be better off against Pittsburgh before Sidney Crosby and Marian Hossa REALLY learn to play together…

Perhaps it’s fitting that the song playing on my way to the rink today was Warren Zevon’s “Excitable Boy.”

That would likely be the best way to describe Sean Avery, although until recently, I always thought it was for relatively mundane reasons such as trash-talking and dating the occasional Hollywood starlet.

But then came today’s Daily News, which says Avery is one of 2,000 names on a client list of a Manhattan madam.  Of course, you should know Avery vehemently denies this, and given his demeanor at practice today, it doesn’t seem to be bothering him too much.

“I certainly have a lot of enemies, I know that,” Avery said when asked how his name ended up on the madam’s computer spreadsheet. “But I do know if I was ever to venture into one of these establishments, I wouldn’t use my own name. I think that would probably be stating the obvious.”

Whether it’s true or not, the Avery issue does have the potential to be a distraction to the Rangers as they seek to lock down a playoff spot—not to mention perfect fodder for fans in opposing arenas. But Avery said it was only worth a laugh with his teammates, and that no one from the coaching staff or the team’s upper management has even approached him about it (although Glen Sather did make a rare appearance in the dressing room after practice).

“It certainly could be a tri-state player that maybe started this whole conspiracy theory,” Avery said.

Like I said before, never a dull moment…..

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Blair Betts rode the bike hard at practice today wearing a pair of Crocs, and according to Tom Renney, is showing enough progress to possibly resume skating as early as Monday.

The consensus is that Scott Gomez was the star of last night’s win, and rightfully so: not only did the Rangers’ leading scorer set up both goals on the power play, he was buzzing around all night, and did it all with while gritting his teeth through the pain of bruised ribs.

And yet if you want a window into the personality of another vital contributor to last night, consider the scene around Chris Drury’s locker after the game.

For several minutes Drury was asked about Gomez, about Nigel Dawes, about the importance of the win. I was one of those people who asked Drury what the team drew from Gomez’s performance, and yet never once did anyone suggest—and of course, never once did Drury himself think to mention—that he may have had an even bigger game with three assists and a typical array of clutch defensive plays (and let’s not forget that Drury would have had a fourth assist if not for Marty Brodeur’s glove save on Ryan Callahan’s breakaway).

The hockey player’s code is that you don’t pat yourself on the back, and to Gomez’s credit, he, too, tried to downplay the importance of his effort last night. But no one takes that to a greater extreme than Drury, who seems like he’d rather pull his fingernails out than talk about all that he does well pretty much every night. In fact, the only time that I can even think about Drury wanting to elaborate on his own play was when he was struggling earlier in the season, and he felt the need to stress he wasn’t doing enough.

Point is, if you want to question whether Drury is worth $7 million a season, that’s fair. That’s an obscene amount of money for someone who’s not quite a superstar.

But other than Henrik Lundqvist, there might not be a player the Rangers will rely on more than they will with Drury this spring. And there definitely isn’t a player who better embodies what this team wants to be about.

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Apologies to the web people at my place. I was wrong when I said my story didn’t run online today, because here it is.

As I noted today (although my story is curiously not online this morning) and John Dellapina elaborated on, Jaromir Jagr reversed course from yesterday’s morning skate and said he would at least hear out representatives from Omsk about a return there next season.

The timing is curious, to put it mildly. On one hand, Jagr says it’s not the right time to be discussing such matters with the Rangers in the middle of a stretch drive. But he also plans to do just that when Omsk GM Anatoly Bardin comes to New York next week—with another purpose of the trip to talk to the Rangers about a transfer fee for Alexei Cherepanov.

Either way, it’s looking more and more like Jagr’s tenure in New York will end after this season. The only way I see that changing is if the Rangers make a spirited playoff run and the captain proves himself to be indispensable in helping the team get over the hump. Otherwise, we might have to savor his various idiosyncrasies while we still can.

Meanwhile, in other news:

Update, 7 p.m.: Gomez in, Prucha out. Discuss amongst yourselves…

Update, 6:45 p.m.: Gomez looks good in warm-ups. I’d be shocked if he doesn’t play. Confirmation later…

And no, I’m not talking about Sean Avery.

I’m talking about the actual circus. You know—clowns, elephants, the inevitable bad dreams that followed (OK, maybe that was just me). It was only this morning that all that was here, and Garden crew is still working on the ice surface as a result. So if you were under any delusions that tonight was going to be some high-scoring, up-and-down affair (and if you were expecting that, by the way, I would then ask where you’ve been for the last 15 years or so), you might want to reconsider.

Point is, if ever there was a night when the Rangers want to avoid falling behind, it would be a night when they’ll be trying to stickhandle through elephant footprints on the way to Martin Brodeur

With that in mind, some notes: