Compare/contrast

Left wing Fredrik Sjostrom said he was fine today after taking a healthy second-period hit from Capitals defenseman Mike Green in Game 1. Sjostrom said he had the wind knocked out of him and there were no head/concussion issues. He said he had no headaches or anything of that nature today.

However, John Tortorella, while on the one hand saying he didn't want to play referee, questioned why there was no penalty on Green while Dan Girardi was penalized in the game's first minute for holding Sergei Federov.

"You've got the Dan Girardi penalty at the beginning of the game and was that a non-call? I believe it was," Tortorella said. "I just don't get it sometimes. I'm not going to play referee. But I've got Dan Girardi's call at the beginning of the game and I've got a non-call there."

Tortorella added the penalty to Girardi was "a brutal call to open a playoff series," though that was probably more a reference to the Rangers starting the series on the penalty kill (and with Blair Betts playing with a broken stick as well) after Tortorella stated before the game the team had to stay out of the box against the Capitals' power play.

Also interesting from Tortorella, his breakdown of the Capitals second goal, Viktor Kozlov's deflection of Nicklas Backstrom's pass from the left with 48.9 seconds remaining in the second period.

"We screwed up off the faceoff, we don't trap," Tortorella said. "Scott Gomez goes off the faceoff, which he shouldn't have done. Our winger should be going. Right from the drop of the puck we foul that up. Sean (Avery) ends up taking Ovechkin on the entry. It ends up being a two-on-two and we get beat to the net. Danny (Girardi) had his stick on the puck before he made that pass. Backstrom just reached a llittle bit more and made that pass. We can't allow Kozlov to go through our D. That's just young kids (Staal and Girardi) fighting their way through it."

And when asked whether he thought the Rangers might have gotten into the Capitals' heads with their Game 1 win/play, Tortorella said, "I'm not worried about their heads. I'm worried about our heads."

Also, Tortorella said one of the keys to the Rangers keeping their edge during a two-day layoff, particularly given how happy Tortorella was to play Wednesday and not tonight so as not to give in to coaching temptation and give his players too much information, was to get his players out the door quickly today. Which they did. Optional meeting, optional skate, a long afternoon off in beautiful downtown D.C.

Meanwhile, around the mostly-deserted Rangers dressing room, Marc Staal admitted to "a couple of mistakes I'd like to have back." And Dan Girardi said he was a little surprised at the holding call against Federov, though he acknowledged he did get caught on the wrong side of Federov to make a clean play. On his tripping call against Alex Ovechkin 57 seconds into the third period, Girardi said he thought he had his skates planted fairly well but the referee was directly behind him and had a good look at the play.

Anyway, sitting down to write a story on Wade Redden and the Rangers' defensemen for tomorrow's Record and Herald News. After that, headed out to catch tonight's Phillies-Nationals game and see that park.

The Rangers practice tomorrow in full at noon.

Comments

[Mike08]

Mike Green said the rangers had a few lucky shots, and got away with a couple of penalties that led to goals, yet he shoukd have got a elbow and possibly a charging penalty for his hit but there was no call. There is also the dan giradi incident, and federov coming in and knocking down avery from behind. NO ROUGHING PENALTY?? i think the refeeing in this game was nervous, a bad call in the begging that led them to giving some make up call, which led to more make up calls, which is terrible in hockey, just call it right and if you mess up dont let it happen again...

[LI Joe]

the pack won tonight 2-0 so they're up a game to zero

animisov and byers scored

[alan]

Andrew - Great job today as usual. Tortorella is certainly an interesting fellow. I don't recall hearing a coach break down plays with such specific references to the players at fault as he does. I read elsewhere other comments of his about how Staal and Girardi struggled at times, and did you see how many minutes both Roszival and Redden played - 28!?!

I'd be interested in hearing your impressions of Zherdev's body language around the locker room these days. He played only 11 minutes last night, and though he made a couple of nice defensive plays, he seems to have lost all confidence (and accuracy) in his shot. I remember earlier in the season when the home crowd would be oohing and aahing anytime he touched the puck. If he could ever get back on track...

[Matty]

Did he say that Mike?

Yet a lot of Caps fans are ripping his poor defensive play on one of our goals(not the first one where he fell thanks to Avery) .. I grow weary when players start dismissing the other team and/or blaming other things for losses ...

I said it before the series, that I thought due to our season series with them Pre-Torts that the Caps were going to be over-confident and weren't going to take us serious, thinking that would be an easy out ... seems to me that they still think that and feel that they should've won game 1

[Keith]

You know what-let them think that. On one hand I think NY got outplayed as evidenced by the poor faceoff showing and the shots were rather lopsided as well. However-on the other hand they beat them and specifically the PP worked and the skill players beat Theodore so it kind of pisses me off to hear the Caps players and the coach and whoever talk like NY is so outmatched. Based on what? That Wash is the second seed? Give me a break-that doesn't mean as much as it used to. On another note-Some moron called in to the NHL Hour and asked Gary Bettman today why he let Avery back in the league (as in-he should have banned him from the NHL for life) and was carrying on about how disappointed he was watching the game last night. Its guys like that that just don't get reality. I tried to get in to smack on him a bit but couldn't get through. It doesn't matter anyway-half the folks love Avery and half or more hate him. I don't think that trip last night was intentional but that's just my opinion. I didn't think Avery really did enough to be honest-he needs to rattle the goalie-that's what he does. I could go for a little more agitator from him next game and a few less penalties from the team.

[Keith]

Sorry about the previous post-I was all over the place on that one. I guess I will sum it up by just saying I think it's absurd for most of the analysts to predict Wash in five games. It's just ridiculous-but I think I can deal with the underdog role-that's fine. We'll see what happens in this series....