Rangers Report Blog

So it turns out only part of the previous post was accurate.

Michael Rozsival is out tonight because of what the Rangers are describing as family reasons, and though Corey Potter was not up in time for the morning skate, he will play tonight against the Devils.

Potter, playing his second NHL game, will be paired with Dmitri Kalinin, while Marc Staal will go back to playing with Paul Mara. That leaves Dan Girardi and Wade Redden intact.

No further word on what is keeping Rozsival out, but according to Tom Renney, it’s not expected to be more than one game.

Meanwhile, Colton Orr is battling the flu and was instructed to stay home by Renney, but is expected to try to play tonight. Should he be available, Aaron Voros will skate on a line with Brandon Dubinsky and Lauri Korpikoski, while Petr Prucha and Dan Fritshce would again be the scratches.

As a precaution in case Orr can’t go, Prucha will take part in warm-ups.

You wonder if Prucha has any sense of humor left at this point. I wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t…

If Petr Prucha’s presence on the ice (along with Dan Fritsche) after everyone else retreated to the locker room is any indication, the forward will not play tonight against the Devils after all.

Colton Orr and Michal Rozsival missed the skate altogether, but in the absence of a Corey Potter call-up, one would assume Rozsival is fit to play tonight.

Meanwhile, the Devils haven’t scored a regulation goal in seven periods. Good news or bad news?

More answers in a bit…

A few notes after the Rangers’ first practice back from the two-day Christmas break:

Here’s hoping everyone enjoyed their holiday.

We have an interfaith dynamic going on here at Blog Headquarters, which carries with it a number of repercussions, but one is that our kids essentially pull the jackpot lever every December. In fact, should one day you notice I’ve ceased posting here, it likely means I have tripped on a rod hockey game or toy guitar and split my head open.

But since I’m hoping to avoid that (maybe I’ll my wear my CCM helmet around the house just in case), I’ll be checking in from practice today, where are there no shortage of questions surrounding your Rangers.

More on those later…

Since there seems to be some confusion behind the message of the previous post, a quick clarification:

When I urge fans to take a deep breath and perhaps step away from hockey for a moment, I say so not to try to convince anyone that all is well with your team. In fact, if all truly was well, I’d say talk Rangers all you want the next couple of days.

But because this team indeed has serious flaws and right now is clearly a source of frustration to many, I’m of the belief the current state of the Rangers shouldn’t spoil your holidays.

Regardless of what you believe in or how you celebrate, I think this time should be for embracing the good in your life—not for dwelling on the things that might make you crazy.

Either way, I’m appreciative of the passion and the loyalty shown on this blog.

Happy holidays.

In the wake of another Rangers debacle, I doubt anyone is interested in my misadventures last night, in which I had an almost completed story before me by the middle of the second period, only to have to “scramble to rewrite”:http://www.lohud.com/article/20081224/SPORTS01/812240368/-1/SPORTS once the Capitals mounted their comeback.

Call it an occupational hazard. Not just writing for a newspaper, or covering hockey, but covering this team in particular, which may be the most schizophrenic first-place team in sports history.

At one point, while also expounding on the resurgent play of Ryan Callahan—he had two goals, remember?—I had written something about how the Rangers had won for the fourth time in five games. Five goals later, they’ve instead lost two straight. And a Merry Christmas to you, too, Mr. Ovechkin.

Clearly, there’s a lot to sift through. I detect some frustration and even anger from fans after last night, and as much as its not my place to tell you how to feel, I say give it a couple of days. Regardless of how the Rangers emerge from the Christmas break, there’s a lot of hockey left to play.

So rest up. Step away from the computer if you must. And with the holiday upon us, try to think of someone less fortunate than yourself—like, for instance, an Islanders fan.

So the Rangers collapse in devastating but sadly familiar fashion, and Chris Drury somehow has found a silver lining. No, seriously.

“That could be the point that gets us home-ice advantage,” Drury said. “I’m certainly not going to let it ruin my Christmas and I don’t think anyone here is going to let it ruin their break, either.

“There are 24 others teams in this league who would be dying to have our record, with all the points we’ve accumulated over a tough schedule. It’s certainly not a good way to get a point. But it’s over and done with. It’s already in the garbage can as far as I’m concerned.”

It was a surprising assessment from the captain, especially a captain who earlier this season said the Rangers shouldn’t be deceived by a record inflated by shootout wins.

But it was also apparent Drury was using the occasion of another dispiriting loss to try to make a statement. It was the most animated I’ve seen him when talking to the media in his two years here. And while it’s hard to believe anyone on the Rangers was actually OK with blowing a 4-0 lead—heck, this is just what we wanted! —there could be something to a captain taking on a decided shift in tone.

Because right now, this team clearly needs something.
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Meanwhile, I’ll try to check in over the next two days. But if not, I hope everyone out there has a happy and healthy holiday.

The ever-perceptive Lynn Zinser of the Times noted this ominous sign on one of the Garden scoreboards hours before the opening faceoff:

Capitals 5, Rangers 3

Do they know something we don’t? Probably not. But it does serve as a fitting segue into one of my new working theories, that the Rangers are better equipped to play sound, defensive hockey on the road than at home.

The numbers don’t necessarily back my theory up when you consider that two of the team’s worst defensive games were in New Jersey and in Montreal. But that doesn’t change the fact that the Rangers usually—and especially last week out West—are usually content to keep the game simple in opposing buildings. In hockey, they call this playing a “good road game,” which sources tell me, you can only play on the road.

But if the Rangers are going to be a dangerous team over the balance of the season, they need to eliminate some of the disjointed, disconnected play that has crept into their game in lots of buildings, but most noticeably at the Garden.

“It’s not about putting on a show or doing extraordinary things,” Tom Renney said “It is about detail and being sound with and without the puck and managing our game. Our tendency has been we’ve been able to do that better on road. But it doesn’t mean we can’t get it back and place the priorities where they belong.”

Now, a related aside here: a lot of fans and even members of the media will say that the Rangers emphasis on defensive hockey—in which they’re happy to win games 2-1—makes them exceptionally boring. By contrast, those same people will say that 8-5 loss at the Prudential Center a few weeks back was one of the most entertaining games of the year.

I say pick your poison. As much as I’m a believer that the game is at its most exciting when two teams are trading chances at opposite ends of the rink—it actually doesn’t even matter if they score—I’m also of the belief that a team playing meaningful games in late wing and early spring is far more entertaining than one that already is out of the playoff picture.

And that’s the dilemna for the Rangers: if they every really try to open it up, they’re doomed. As this team is currently constructed, it doen’t have the personnel to regularly beat teams 6-5, and as Henrik Lundqvist has shown the past few weeks, even he is vulnerable if left to fend for himself.

There’s a middle ground in there somewhere, and it’s what the Rangers have been shooting for all season—games in which they shut down teams defensively and then create chances in transition. It sounds great in theory. The hard part has been actually making it happen.

Update, end of first period: So much for my theory, because the Rangers have been giving the puck away in every way imaginable and still have a 3-0 lead. It doesn’t hurt that Jose Theodore was apparently asleep for the first 10 minutes of the game, or that Washington is missing most of its other big guns. Either way, the score is at least a little deceptive.

Chris Drury was asked yesterday if it’s at all difficult to focus on hockey with Christmas rapidly approaching.

“It’s almost easier because everyone’s in such a good mood getting ready for the holidays,” the Rangers captain said. “It’s the other down times when you feel like the season’s dragging and there’s no end in sight when you lose focus a little more.”

This brings us to tonight against the Capitals. If the Rangers can build on their relatively strong play on the West Coast, they are permitted to enter the two-day Christmas break a festive mood. If they fall victim to Alexander Ovechkin and Co. by suffering the infamous first-game-back-from-a-road-trip letdown, then I recommend coal in all their stockings.

OK, so that’s a little harsh, but the point is this is a crucial juncture in the Rangers season. With Mats Sundin “no longer a possibility”:http://www.lohud.com/article/20081223/SPORTS01/812230367/-1/SPORTS, it’s up to the current players to make the argument that the team is better off without him. It may be a stretch, but compare it to another near-acquisition of a mammoth center, one who was also supposed to put the Rangers over the top. When this franchise lost out on Eric Lindros in that famous Larry Bertuzzi ruling back in 1992, it was supposed to be a devastating setback, Instead, it was an event that indirectly helped pave the way for the 1994 Stanley Cup.

No, I’m not saying this team is ready for that. But what I am saying, to quote that great Czech philosopher Jaromir Jagr, is that when one door closes, another usually opens.

Some other notes:

The Rangers’ first practice back from their West Coast trip was the first chance for the team to address definitely forging ahead without Mats Sundin.

The reaction: Oh no! We’re doomed!

OK, no one said that.

“We would have loved to have him join our team, there’s no doubt about that,” Markus Naslund said. “But you never knew what it would take. We never knew if we had to lose a couple of guys and who knew what the chemistry would have been. I like what we have going on here. Guys are playing well off one another. It’s a close-knit group. I think it’s a positive that we get to keep this group together.”

While Tom Renney said the Sundin possibility was little more than “speculation and innuendo”, more than one player admitted it felt like the passing of a trade deadline, with an anxious build-up giving way to a sense of relief. And as Scott Gomez said, even if the Rangers would have benefited from Sundin, it never felt right to him to openly campaign for it.

“It’s something you  can’t do,” Gomez said. “It’s not right to the next guy to think that you want someone. You don’t want to sit there and talk about it. It’s something you learn early on. If it happens, it happens. Great. He’s one of the best players. But to talk about it is not even fair to the next guy.”

Some other notes: