What we have got here is failure to communicate.
A day after benching Michal Rozsival for the final 31 minutes of the Rangers’ 4-3 victory in Washington, John Tortorella said that he had not talked to the defenseman because, basically, he’s done enough talking.
And Rozsival, for his part, told The Post that he does not see the necessity of chatting up the head coach, either.
“It was pretty self explanatory,” Tortorella said yesterday of the decision to eliminate the veteran from the rotation following a series of egregious errors. “There’s been a lot of explaining, but you can only explain it so many times.”
Tortorella reiterated that he believes in “clean slates,” but when asked whether Rozsival would get his customary turn tomorrow when the Ducks visit the Garden, the coach said, “I’m not sure what I’m going to do.”
Of course, Tortorella also said he has no intention of adding a seventh defenseman to the roster, so unless he’s cutting down to five for the front end of a Broadway back-to-back that concludes Monday against the Leafs, he would seem to have little choice in the matter.
“It was the coach’s decision and I have to respect that. I was thinking about my game on the bench, but I always think about what I do on the ice, whether it’s good or bad,” Rozsival said. “I know I made some mistakes. It’s something that can’t go on.”
Rozsival has struggled since the 2007 playoffs in which he was the lead defenseman, but labrum issues that required surgery following 2007-08 had an impact that season and the following one. But Rozsival told The Post during last month’s training camp that he no longer had physical problems, and that he felt completely healthy.
