I'm still optimistic. 2-2 is where this Series should be right now, except the Rangers probably should have won Game 2 and the Sens Game 3....last night was really a toss up..except with a 2-0 lead, you would think they should have held on, they had plenty of chances to make it 3-0. This team has been grinding it out all year........a lot of tight games etc.....no reason to believe they would quickly KO any team in the east. They'll get past this series, but it'll go 7..and the home ice they busted their asses all year to get will pay off.
Im annoyed...we need to win game 5 Cant stand the lack of us being explosive...Damn, I feel like if we lose this series we may just trade for Nash over the off season
Stepan just isn't the same player since the Pittsburgh kneeing incident. I don't care what anyone says, he must be more hurt than is being let on.
Hagelin is a bigger loss than we all knew already in my opinion. They're all must wins, but saturday we will see the team we've seen this regular season, it's coming. they will wake up and take control.
I though this was intersting, this was posted on the Rangers Report this morning. http://rangers.lohudblogs.com/ Tortorella: Rangers will try to regain momentum In the wake of Game 4, the Rangers held a conference call with John Tortorella and reporters a little while ago. Our friend Carp was a healthy scratch. He’s in the air returning from Ottawa, so I handled the call in his absence. Tortorella’s club lost 3-2 on Wednesday night to even the series two games apiece. It dropped the Rangers to 0-7 in their last seven overtime playoff games and was highlighted, in part, by their failure to produce a third goal after scoring a pair in the opening 6:10. Their power play converted both goals to start the night 2-0 but went 0 for its last 5. Those items, the absence of Carl Hagelin, and whether or not his players were gassed were among the topics Tortorella discussed this afternoon. But he really stressed the need to regain momentum. Here’s a complete transcript of the call… Question: How did you miss Carl Hagelin in Game 3? John Tortorella: “That’s not the reason why. I thought we played really well yesterday. You want to see him, but we’ve made do. We’ve done a lot of good things so we’re not going to use that as an excuse. That’s for sure.” Q: Certainly, some of the guys are gassed and he brings a lot of speed and he’s played big minutes for you. JT: “No, guys aren’t gassed. I thought the third period was our best period. That’s when we — other than a couple spurts that they had — really played our best hockey. You may look at minutes and think our guys were gassed. Our guys weren’t gassed. I thought that was our best period, really, since the first game.” Q: Your best guys need to be your best guys. Outside of Henrik, do you feel that that has been the case often enough in this series? JT: “I’m not about in Game 4 to start naming names. We’ve had some people, some secondary players, play some good minutes. I thought a number players through our lineup gave us some good things here. But after I’m not interested in naming names. We’re going to win or lose as a team here. Again, I thought we just didn’t get it done in overtime. I thought we played a pretty good game last night, so we’ll just get ready for another one.” Q: Can you talk about the overtime issue? Is that becoming a concern for the team? JT: “They’ve made a play. They’ve scored a couple goals and we haven’t. Before they scored last night, we had a couple of chances. It’s not about a concern. It’s about trying to find a way to win. They have done that in two games here. If we have another opportunity we’re going to go about our business and see if we can get it done.” Q: Brad Richards talked before the series started about that ‘04 run in Tampa where you guys won one, lost one, won one, lost one, basically from the start of the Eastern Conference quarterfinals through the Cup finals. As a coach, how do you guide a team through that? JT: “You just get ready for your next game. As I have said, it’s about momentum. I thought going into the overtime we had some really good momentum as far as how we played. Our second period we struggled a bit because we took three penalties, which changed the momentum of the game. But going into the overtime I thought we had really good momentum.” “Again, they scored a goal on a 2-on-2. They get a win so they’re entering this game with the momentum. We’re just going to try and grab it back — play our game and try to grab back the momentum.” Q: Are you more encouraged by what you saw from your power play on those first two chances ore are you concerned about the last five where you could’ve put the game away with another goal and you didn’t get one? JT: “That was the key to the game. We had some good chances to get that third goal, even when it was 2-0 and 2-1 at the time. Staal had a great chance. It was getting that third goal. When we didn’t that you could see in the second period the momentum changed a bit. It turned into a really good hockey game.” “In the third period, I thought we had the better chances other than a couple spurts by them. I thought we battled hard. We blocked shots during those spurts, but we just weren’t able to find that next goal in the two losses that we’ve had here.” “Again, I know everybody wants to know what we’re going to do here. We’re going to go out and play. We’re going to practice tomorrow. They’ve away from the game today. We’ll look at some things as far as, really, some of the good things we’ve done. We’re going to go out and play and gain some momentum and maybe score two (wins) in a row.”
Man, I don't know what I feel like going into tomorrow night. Really could go either way. It almost feels to me like the Rangers are down in the series because of the way they lost Game 4. Hopefully the crowd is ready to go right from the drop.
I see it like Torts......Period 3 of the last Game was one of their best of the series. Ottawa has won 2 games in this series, both in OT, have not held a lead I don't think at any point other than when they won games 2 and 4......Hank is gonna be pissed......I know that OT shot was a great one, but he still should have stopped it......as he should have Ottawa's tying goal. I feel pretty optimistic about this next game...all year long i think we've been waiting for bad things to happen, and whenever that happens this team shows it toughness.
Alfie hasn't flown to NYC with the team. Any sympathy I had for Hagelin's suspension has long since gone.
Cant argue with this thinking at all. I would and have, gladly accepted a hagelin for Alfie trade off.
