Rangers Report Blog

We’re live from the press room at the Garden and I’ll be honest with you: There’s definitely a sense of excitement here.

Big game tonight, and since I don’t have much to report I’ll tell you this: I expect a wild night. I eavesdropped on Brent Sutter’s pregame chat and left with the impression he wants to Devils to really mix it up tonight. He said they haven’t embraced the rivalry with the Rangers all season.

“There’s a reason why we only won one game,” Sutter said. “Not because they’re so much better then we are. … They’ve found ways to win.”

Sutter said every game was the same, with the result marred by a 3-4 minute stretch of bad hockey.

Now? He believes the Devs are  “in desperate mode.”

My immediate thought was that Sutter wants his team to play with the same edge it did on Friday. How that edge manifests itself will be crucial to the outcome. Will the Devils disrupt what has been a successful game plan for the Rangers? Or will they spend the night playing musical chairs in the visiting penalty box? We shall see.

Tom Renney repeated the same sentiments from the morning skate, so I won’t recycle his thoughts from the previous post. Still, here were two items of interest:

1. Colton Orr could technically play late in this series, but he’s not close. “We’re starting the beginning of the process of getting him fit,” Renney said. It’s not a matter of Orr’s toe, which has healed.

2. Renney on Christian Backman’s cross-check:

“It’s a hockey play,” Renney said. “You try to finish a check. You can’t blame him for that. Our guy didn’t cross-check him. He hit his stick. (Backman) could’ve maybe protected Zach by havnig his stick down but he didn’t. Those things happen.”

Also of note: Jagr strolled in wearing a suit AND a Stanley Cup ring. Someone asked him if the ring was from ‘91. “No,” he said. “Two-thousand eight.”

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