It was either an itchy trigger finger or some newly discovered Canadian mean streak that caused highlights of Canada’s Olympic glory – culminating, of course, in Sidney Crosby’s overtime goal against the United States – to be displayed during “The Star-Spangled Banner” in this rink Tuesday night.

Something less than a gracious welcome. But then, Ryan Callahan wasn’t the most polite guest, either.

Fresh off his first Olympic Games and the stinging loss to Canada that he called “the best game I’ve ever played in,” Callahan played one of his finest games this season, scoring twice in a four-goal second period that carried the Blueshirts to a 4-1 season-reopening victory over the Senators. The game was the Rangers’ first in 16 days, but technically it was their third straight win and fourth in five games – a mini-surge that, who knows, might tempt cap-strapped Glen Sather into purchase mode ahead of today’s 3 p.m. trade deadline.

If things are going to break right for the Rangers in the final six weeks of the regular season, there were omens good and bad last night. The good was their 60-minute effort following the long layoff, and their second-period outburst that started with Callahan’s highlight-reel tally 22 seconds in and including scores from Brandon Dubinsky and Sean Avery.

Click here to read the full article – By New York Daily News

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If you’re looking for that glimmer of playoff hope, beyond two wins in a row, as the Rangers’ players and coaches go their separate ways for the two-week Olympic break, it is this:

One of their chief rivals in the race — the Tampa Bay Lightning — shared the Garden ice with the Rangers on Sunday, and let’s just say that both teams showed how typical they are of the bottom two-thirds of the East. Inconsistent. At times lousy. Sometimes putrid.

The Rangers got down by two goals, skating at about three-quarters speed and were booed off the ice after the first period of a game that the NHL should be thankful wasn’t on network TV.

“We stunk,” coach John Tortorella said. “We got booed off the ice, and we deserved to be booed off the ice.”

The Rangers then scored four in a row in the second, including a highlight Sean Avery penalty shot, for a 5-2 victory, their third in four games.

Click here to read the full article – By Rick Carpinello of The Journal News

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Marian Gaborik missed his third game of the season when the Rangers hosted the Predators on Wednesday night at Madison Square Garden.

“He’s day to day,” coach John Tortorella said. “In talking to Rammer [trainer Jim Ramsey] last night, it wasn’t a good chance because it just swelled up. It’s a pretty nasty gash. We’re fortunate it wasn’t more serious than it was. I think, after a couple of days, it’ll calm down, the swelling. So, hopefully, he’ll be ready to play in Pittsburgh.”

The Rangers face the Penguins on Friday night as two games remain before the Olympic break.

Tortorella said deciding to rest Gaborik – a key player for Slovakia in the Olympics – for these last two games is not a consideration.

“Not a chance,” Tortorella said. “If he can play, he’ll play. He’s our best player.”

Gaborik has 35 goals and 34 assists and is on a five-game point streak with six goals and two assists in that span.

He was injured during a shootout drill when Lundqvist came out of the crease to poke the puck. Gaborik attempted to jump over the sliding goalie but Lundqvist’s skate caught Gaborik’s right leg. Gaborik lay on the ice for about a half a minute before skating gingerly to the bench.

“We didn’t know if he was joking with Hank or not,” said center Erik Christensen, who had Chris Drury on his right wing instead of Gaborik against the Predators.

Click here to read the full article – By Bergen Record

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It’s done. For better or worse, Olli Jokinen is a Ranger.

The deal, announced in the wee hours Eastern time, had had been held up for a couple of days while Kotalik played Hamlet, pondering whether to waive his three-team no-trade clause that included the Flames.

Jokinen and Prust, who both played in the Flames’ 3-0 loss to the Flyers in Calgary last night before the transaction was announced — how bizarre is that? — are expected to join the Blueshirts for tonight’s game against the Kings.

The key player in the deal for the offense-challenged Blueshirts is Jokinen, the very talented 31-year-old center who has scored 34 goals or more in four seasons, but who also has a terrible reputation around the league as a selfish player who also is a bad teammate.

GM Glen Sather did well to move Kotalik, whom he signed to a three-year, $9 million free-agent contract over the summer who but fell quickly out of favor with head coach John Tortorella and became a shell of himself over the last month.

Click here to read the full article – By New York Post

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The team that was going to dominate third periods because of the rigid summer conditioning regimen instituted by head coach John Tortorella somehow can’t find a way to get through the final 20 minutes of games.

No wonder the Rangers can’t win very many of them, either.

Last night’s first 50 minutes were far better than the twin disasters of Friday’s 5-1 loss in Tampa and Saturday’s 8-3 defeat in Pittsburgh, but that hardly provided solace to the Blueshirts when the Penguins scored three times, including an empty-netter, in the final 8:46 to send the freefalling Rangers to a 5-2 defeat at the Garden.

“It’s discouraging because we did a lot of good things and had a lot of good minutes, but we’re making big mistakes at key times and we’re not getting the big play we need to win games,” said Tortorella, whose team has been outscored by an aggregate 14-5 in the last nine third periods.

Click here to read the full article – By Larry Brooks of New York Post

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After the Rangers were routed in Tampa on Friday but before they were routed in Pittsburgh on Saturday, John Tortorella suggested that it was past time for the locker room to “take ownership” of the inconsistency that has marked the past six weeks.

Fair enough. But when is the head coach going to take similar ownership of a team that is adrift without an identity, attack or defensive posture?

When is Tortorella, whose club gets back on the horse tonight when the Penguins come to the Garden 48 hours after inflicting an 8-3 punishment on the Blueshirts, going to imprint some sort of a stamp on this collection of players he had influence in selecting?

First things first, though: The Rangers need better from Henrik Lundqvist, who presumably will not be bumped from his start tonight by Steve Valiquette, Chad Johnson, Jussi Markkanen, Vitali Yeremeyev or Doug Soetaert, though following this weekend’s goaltending rotation, one never quite knows.

Click here to read the full article – By New York Post

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“As Donald Brashear and the rest of the Rangers wrestle with their pasts Thursday night at Verizon Center, Matt Gilroy will be about the only Ranger savoring his memories of the place.

The Rangers Thursday night make their first meaningful trip to Washington since their Game 7 loss back on April 28 capped a playoff collapse, reacquainting themselves with Alex Ovechkin, who has five goals in three games this season.

Brashear, a Capital at the time, was suspended for that series-deciding game and left for New York as a free agent over the summer. Rebuffed in his request for Washington to add a second year to its offer, the veteran enforcer found the deal he was looking for on Broadway – two years, $2.8 million – ending his three-year run in D.C. After the signing, Caps GM George McPhee suggested Brashear had become obsolete in Washington and that “you don’t really need” enforcers such as Brashear.

“I’m a role player, I try to get body checks and play physical,” said Brashear, 37. Obviously (tonight) I’m gonna try to give it a little extra,” the 6-3, 237-pound winger said. “You always want to show, sometimes they traded you because they think you don’t belong there anymore, that you don’t belong in the league anymore, and you want to show them that you can play and you still belong in the league.”"

Click here to read the full article – By Michael Obernauer of New York Daily News

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The time has passed in New York where players are assigned roles on credit or because of their names or payroll stubs. And that’s how it must be if the Rangers are going to evolve into a team that’s taken seriously.

Still, as the Blueshirts cross the Hudson for tonight’s match in Newark against the Devils, it’s impossible to understand why Chris Drury has been dismissed from the club’s power play unit without so much as a sniff . . . and at the particular moment his skill at sniffing for loose change around the net would be most welcome.

John Tortorella tried to explain his reasoning yesterday while a handful of Rangers participated in an optional skate, but the coach’s account clarified little following a pair of games in which both power play units moved the puck well and got shots through to the net but could not cash in on any of the club’s nine manpower advantages.

“The team has changed a bit as far as personnel, and I think the six forwards who are playing now deserve time on [the power play],” Tortorella said. “Chris has been bumped from that spot, but forever? I doubt that.”

Click here to read the full article – By Larry Brooks of New York Post

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The Stanley Cup was so close to the Rangers during pregame warm-ups Friday night that they could have defied hockey superstition, reached out and touched it. Of course, until further notice, that trophy belongs to the Pittsburgh Penguins. And at the Igloo, so do the Rangers.

An admirable charge from Marian Gaborik and Co. in the third period couldn’t erase the hiccups of the first two, and under the shadow of a newly raised championship banner, the Rangers fell, 3-2, to Pittsburgh in their 2009-10 opener – making it 11 losses in their last 12 visits to the Steel City. Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin each scored for the Penguins, although Gaborik scored his first goal as a Ranger and proved harder to handle than either of those Penguin superstars – which is at least one of the promising signs the visitors can take from a wobbly season-opening loss in which nine players were making their Ranger debut.

“It just feels good to have the first game over with,” said Henrik Lundqvist, who made 28saves and was responsible for keeping the Rangers close early. “It’s been a long week just practicing, just wanting to get going. The result is not what we were looking for, but still, we did a lot of good things. Third period, we came back pretty good.”

The evening began with a flurry of flashbulbs and flashy tricks, as the 60-foot high arena scoreboard was draped in enormous white curtains that reached down to the ice surface. After a retrospective of the Penguins’ run to the Cup was projected on the curtains, they came cascading to the floor, revealing the Cup itself glistening inside the center faceoff circle.

Click here to read the full article – By Michael Obernauer of New York Post

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It was nearly Christmas two years ago when Marian Gaborik turned in the game of his life, a five-goal performance that had his Minnesota teammates and fans in awe, and even sent the Rangers, 6-3 losers that night, home from St. Paul talking about the “world-class player” they had just encountered.

“He was just at the right place at the right time, and that quick release – that’s what stood out,” Henrik Lundqvist said yesterday, some 20 months removed from the shellacking Gaborik gave him on Dec.20, 2007. “Those goals were not big chances, they were just rebounds, caroms, and one breakaway. He was just always there to score them.”

As Lundqvist spoke, Gaborik stood no more than 15 feet away at the stall he now inhabits in the Rangers’ dressing room. The sensational Slovak is wearing a Blueshirt now, the upshot of Glen Sather’s latest big-money bet (this one, a mere $37.5 million) that the one-time 42-goal scorer can be the weapon the Rangers lost when Jaromir Jagr left for Russia and play a key role in leading them away from what became a dreadful slog through 2008-09.

But in that Ranger dressing room, there is Gaborik, there is Lundqvist and there are a hundred questions that will begin to be answered Friday night when the Rangers open their 2009-10 season in Pittsburgh against the defending Stanley Cup champions.

Click here to read the full article – By Michael Obernauer of New York Daily News

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