Your second-place Rangers
For a team that's fallen out of first place in the Atlantic Division for the first time this season (now one point behind the Flyers, though Philadelphia still has one game at hand) and which had to spend an extra night in Washington, the Rangers were a fairly chipper bunch on the ice for today's one-hour skate.
New lines again, though coach Tom Renney explained the thinking was he's really looking at these combinations in terms of their power-play potential as units (changes in italics):
Markus Naslund-Scott Gomez-Ryan Callahan
Nigel Dawes-Chris Drury-Petr Prucha
Lauri Korpikoski-Brandon Dubinsky-Nikolai Zherdev
Fredrik Sjostrom-Blair Betts-Colton Orr
Henrik Lundqvist is feeling better and will be back in net for tomorrow night's game against the Pittsburgh Penguins.
"I felt good last night, it was a rough afternoon, I threw up a couple of times," Lundqvist said. "I drank a lot of water. I talked to Rammer (trainer Jim Ramsey) and to Tom and he made the call. Now I'm good to go."
The team finally left Washington around nine this morning after the oil leak on the team's charter plane was fixed and came right to the MSG Training Center. The biggest victory of the whole night was the Rangers, after checking their traveling party out of their D.C. hotel, was able to get the rooms back on short notice. And the hotel put out a nice dinner after the game.
"We got a good night's sleep, not too many complaints," Sjostrom said. "It's happened before on other teams so you know it can happen. It's good to break the habits. Always find the positive. The only difference was we came in our suits today. It looks spiffy."
The Rangers, of course, had only packed for one night so they arrived for practice in their business suits.
Naturally, there was plenty of power-play and special teams work today at practice. At one point, Renney stopped a drill to insist his team "Be assertive."
Only scary moment of practice came when a hard Aaron Voros shot missed the net and nearly struck Nikolai Zherdev's ankle as he skated toward the right corner. Voros apologized as Zherdev just shook his head. Hard shots off ankles aren't funny on this rink: remember Brian Leetch missing the start of a season after stopping a Bobby Holik shot with his ankle?
The other week, Voros nearly struck Lundqvist in the mask with a close-in slap shot.
More later if anything comes not, if not, off tomorrow's morning skate.
Larry Brooks hit the nail on the head in today's article. “The shame of it is that the Rangers and the coaching staff seem unable to reverse the season-long follies on the PP. PP? Hey, maybe that’s a signal head coach Tom Renney should recognize – PP, as in Petr Prucha, who scored for the second straight game and is the team’s most potent, if unused and thus dormant, weapon with the man advantage.
“Of course, it only took half a season for Renney to recognize what Prucha has to offer at even-strength, so it’s probably unwise to expect too much.”
Posted by: graves9 | January 04, 2009 at 02:27 PM
I've been saying all along prucha should be put on the power play. glad to see it looks like hes going to get a shot
Posted by: Ryan McFadden | January 04, 2009 at 03:27 PM
I've been saying all along prucha should be put on the power play. glad to see it looks like hes going to get a shot
Posted by: Ryan McFadden | January 04, 2009 at 03:29 PM
Ryan I wouldn't bet on it.
Posted by: graves9 | January 04, 2009 at 04:06 PM
Make it third place Rangers.......
Posted by: graves9 | January 05, 2009 at 01:04 AM