Rangers coach John Tortorella said last night’s fiasco will be fixed by tomorrow’s crucial finale.
They have no choice.
“I know this team will be ready to play against Jersey,” he said.
Not since 1966, the Original Six, has there been a Stanley Cup playoff without at least one of the Metropolitan area teams, the Rangers, Islanders or Devils. That streak ends will be in jeopardy if the Rangers lose to the Devils tomorrow afternoon at the Garden.
“We laid an egg and we need to move by it as quickly as possible,” Tortorella said after last night’s 3-0 foldup to the out-of-it Thrashers before a booing crowd. “All we’ve lost tonight is the control. We’ll hope for help and have to win our next game.”
Tortorella missed the playoffs last year in his first season as Rangers head coach, nipped by losing a shootout in the final game of the season. It’s down to the wire again.
“It’s not going to be a problem to forget about [last night] going into Saturday’s game,” Henrik Ludqvist said. “I hope I don’t have to sit here in a week and think about it. That’s the biggest concern I have.”
The Rangers magic number remains at three points, either gained by themselves and/or dropped by the Hurricanes.
“We have to watch the scoreboard [tonight when Carolina visits Atlanta]. That’s what happened tonight. We have to watch the scoreboard before we play our next game,” Tortorella said.
The Rangers seemed stunned to have let this apparent softie get away, and so alarmingly.
“We still have one more to go,” Vinny Prospal said. “We put ourselves in this position. We have to live with it.”
So it’s one last chance tomorrow for the Rangers. They must hope that either the Thrashers or the Lightning Saturday, or both, can beat the Hurricanes.
“It doesn’t surprise me at all,” Tortorella said. “The game tonight surprised me, but it doesn’t surprise me that it takes 82 [games].”
Which makes Game 82 like Game 7.
“We just have to come out like gangbusters,” Brian Boyle said. “There’s nothing to save it for.”
