The Rangers faced the Islanders at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday and did not get the desired result. New York dropped the game 2-1 in front of the sold out crowd, the Rangers’ 187th home sellout in a row. The game was the first part of a home-and-home and the Blueshirts travel to Nassau Coliseum today for a rematch.
The Rangers now have a record of 14-16-3 and their playoff hopes are slowly fading away. Head coach John Tortorella was quite displeased with the (lack of) effort his squad showed in the game. Tortorella unleashed a profanity-laden tirade when asked about the performance:
First question was whether the first period was unacceptable:
“Absolutely (unacceptable).
More similar questions: “I have no explanation for how we started. I wish I could give you one.”
I asked him about the Islanders getting the dirty goal to start the game, the point I was getting at was that the Rangers don’t get goals like that. But I never finished the question.
“That we don’t get,” Tortorella said. “It’s horse(poop) coverage around the corners. He just brings it aroudn the net and it’s a fluky goal, but we don’t get them.”
So what do they need to do?
“Play (firetruckin’) harder.”
So what can he do?
“That’ll be something we’ll decide before tomorrow’s game,” Tortorella said.
“I’ll tell you right now, the thing that’s unacceptable about tonight’s game — and we’re trying to stay positive around here, trying to work out way through it — but when we play like (poop) like that for 20 minutes, in a game like this, in a back-to-back situation, it’s unacceptable . .. it is simply unacceptable. And there has to be something done. We’ll see, along the way here, before tomorrow night’s game, where we go with it. It’s simply unacceptable how we start that game. I wish I could give you a (firetruckin’) explanation for it. I can’t.”
With that he stormed out, nearly knocking a chair off the podium platform.
Henrik Lundqivst even chipped in with his own Dennis Green-style quote saying, They played exactly the way we thought they would play. No surprise. No excuse there.” Clearly, Tortorella and company frustrated. The team hasn’t won since December 5th and has lost eight of its last nine games. If they don’t beat the Islanders tomorrow, there’s likely to be another Tortorella explosion.
Tags:
Henrik Lundqvist,
hockey,
john tortorella,
new york islanders,
new york rangers,
NHL
