Rangers Updates 4.8.09
Some final Rangers stories for today:
Rangers Report: notes from practice, and Torts sounds off on playoffs.
Blue Notes: Tortorella says "don't exhale".
Ok and finally for today, in the NY Daily News, Michael Obernauer held one of his live chats about the Rangers. On the Daily News website, it ran under the headline "Blueshirt Banter".....intentional or not, we'll take the plug, thanks Daily News!
Here are some of the highlights from the chat:
When asked if last night's effort was the best of the season:
"It was certainly one of the better ones. Off the top of my head, I think of the win in Chicago in January, the last two periods in Nashville, the win over the Devils at the Garden a couple weeks ago (struggling as the Devils were, and are), but last night was good. Only thing to quibble with is that is came after another fairly rocky start, but hard to quibble with much in the second period. It was a big effort in a huge spot."
On Chris Drury:
"Drury last night gave you one of those games that he built his reputation on - when it's a big moment, he steps to the front. In addition to the two goals, I thought his line, which went up a lot of the night against Montreal's top line, did a fantastic job stopping Kovalev, who came in scorching hot. Tortorella said afterward that you don't stop Kovalev, you just try to limit him. Well, they limited him to nothing. Sounds a lot like stopping him."
If Roszival isn't 100%, why not Potter?
"Because Rozsival is a better option than Potter right now. First of all - not to defend the money - but you're asking to sit a $20 million defenseman to play a guy with what, five games of NHL experience? I'm not trying to knock Potter; I'm saying that Rozsival has been good in the playoffs before and should be in the lineup if he can skate. I don't know that the knee problem is anything he can't play through."
And of course, the question on all our minds, will Sather be fired?
"I think Sather has had plenty of chances with this team over nine years and his teams have won two playoff series in his time here, which tells me he hasn't done the job and doesn't deserve to keep firing coaches. He has some nice homegrown talent in the system, but he's also overpaid players the last couple years and has a team that I don't see going very far this season (maybe I'll be wrong). If I were in charge, he wouldn't have had such leeway and lasted this long. But I'm not, so do I think they'll fire him? Nope."
The rest of the chat can be found here, as well as the free plug from the Daily News.
That's it from me for today, I may check in tonight for comments, but I'm going to give the laptop the night off, and watch "Lost" with mrs. jrs1940, who is starting to feel like a "Hockey Widow" lately.