D Michal Rozsival has a leg issue, did not skate and will be replaced by Paul Mara alongside Marek Malik tonight. It will be Mara's first game since a check by Buffalo's Patrick Kaleta broke a facial bone on Feb. 23.
The injury to Rozsival, who has played in all but one game this season, doesn't appear to be too serious; although he left practice early on Monday, coach Tom Renney, describing the tweak as an upper leg strain, termed him day-to-day, choosing to rest him now rather than later.
As expected, Petr Prucha, who scored against Philadelphia on Nov. 15, also will be in the lineup; Scott Gomez, who reported he is feeling better and is hoping to play Thursday against the Devils, is out. Henrik Lundqvist will be in the net.
Prucha, a healthy scratch for the last 10 games, doesn't appear to figure into Renney's power play plans. The units this monring were Martin Straka, Jaromir Jagr, and Brandon Dubinsky, along with Mara and Christian Backman. Brendan Shanahan, Chris Drury, Sean Avery, Dan Girardi and Fedor Tyutin were the other combo.
Strange. Maybe that'll change during the game.
More from the Garden later...
Comments (46)
Good, this works out well, depth is a good thaaaaang
Hopefully Prucha and Mara play their balls off tonight.
whoa, that is weird. that leaves us with nothing to bicker about.....
why does renney insist on putting tyutin on the PP? put straka on the point with that unit and put prucha on the PP with jagr/dubie...at least try it! what do we have to lose?
So if it's broke we don't fix it?
sect 314 i agree with u and if straka has the opportunity to shoot and he doesnt he gets fined. its very simple. and to the person who said its not personal thats causing the pp problem i completely agree with u. this pp is completely unorganzied. mr renny if u read this i bet $10,000 dollars that if u give me one game to run the pp we will score a goal provided we have 4 pp opportunities at least.
ha ha ha. I hope you get your chance Matt.
It's good to see Prucha back, but not under these circumstances. I don't get not having him on the PP. It sure as hell can't hurt. But then again, all it takes is shooting the puck, and crowding the net to find the rebound and/or screen the goalie.
I'm not sure why that seems so difficult to this team. Anyway, I'll be praying that Mara and Pru do indeed play their balls off(ha ha) and the Rangers win this one. Hank better be on his game as well.
Let's Go Rangers!
There you have it. Mara gets a spot.
Dude, i agree it's all about the depth that our "horrible" GM did a GREAT job addressing at the deadline...lol
I'm all for trying anything that helps the PP. Shoot, pull Henrik and make it a 6 on 4 at this point. lol
HUGE game tonight!
Loss means Philly ties us in the standings.
Win pushes us further away.
Win and Ottawa loses or ties we take 5th or tie.
6-1-1 on the season against Philly after tonight.
LETS GO RANGERS!!!
Not going to waste the time or space reposting it here but, check out the game notes for tonights game. Lots of interesting stats, records and all that. As well as updates on some Hartford guys.
I liked what they did at the Philly game last week. They should spend more time on broadcasts talking about Hartord and the guys playing there.
matt i benn sayin the PP needs a new GAME PLAN, not players. i dont think its renneys fault the PP is awful either, hes been preaching all year to crash the net and bombard the net with shots. i agree the personnel they have currently doesnt have the mindset to crash and shoot..they'd rather deke and move (ala jagr, gomez). with that said, these guys are not sitting when we have a PP. i think its up to the those kinda guys to change the way they play/think on the PP, to finally get it rolling. mtl has an awesome PP, maybe they can watch tapes or something!
that being said, this teams PP will not make or break them. theyre to good everywhere else to let the bad PP kill their hopes of a long playoff. but just think if we ever got it going..LOOK OUT!..they may be unstoppable
im convinced the can play 5 on 5 with ANY TEAM in the east for sure..i dunno aboot the west tho, those teams (SJ / ANA types) skeer the bejesus outta me.
Fellow bloggers-
As much as i want wins, especially against divisional opponents, 6th place is not a bad consolation. Particularlly becasue we play a "weaker" Carolina team. Playoffs is a whole new season and a whole new animal. If we move up in the standings,a nd certain teams move up/down, would you really want to play Ottawa / Pit/ Philly in 1st round?
(ex. playing a "weaker" ATL last year then moving on to tougher teams.)
Dont get me wrong, Im very confident with this group against anyone. Lets Go Rangers!
Devils and Montreal are the only ones I would rather not face in the first round. The teams you mention I don't have a problem with but, canes would be a good start.
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OMG just shut the eff up already with the stupid Habsfans crap
how come there has to be so many arseholes that come to this blog
Typically speaking, we play better games against the teams that we know will give us a challenge and tend to take the weaker teams too lightly. I'm fine w/ playing a tough team in the first round this way we'll be ready to play from the start of the playoffs. We can definetely beat any team in our conference so whoever is first is fine with me. 6th would be great but so would any spot above it.
Personally, I'd really like home ice advantage in at least 1 round, so I'd love the 2nd or 4th seed.
5th seed is definitely worse than the 6th seed though.
we can take jersey in any round this year. 2 years ago when they swept us.. we were injured, tired from the olympics and not as skilled all around as we are now.
mtl's PP is enough to scare any team, but they have major flaws. ottawa is a one line team. pitt has very potent offense, but defensivley theyre terrible.
carolina scares me because EVERY ranger fan wants to play them, and you know what happens when you "want" to play a team. looks like people expect them to be a pushover like last years 1st rd opponent cause of the 3 seed vs. 6 seed or southeast division thing. also, they won the cup in '06 and most of their roster was on that team, including ward. i still think washington has a shot to win that division, and ovechkin may be the scariest opponent of all.
i have no worries vs. anyone as i stated, we can beat any and all east teams.
leetchpic,
the playoffs are a different animal, im sure they will not take anyone lightly. i think in the past it was like that, not anymore. occasionaly this year (phoenix, LA) they play down to the opponent.
the one team i do not want to face is montreal, after the game that shall not be mentioned, im terrified of that team. but, they do have a rookie goalie, and playoffs (let alone playoffs in montreal) are very different.
And NJ has someone named Marty Broduer. Pittsburgh has been playing well without Sidney...will only get better with him. Ottawa has been shaky, especially with back and forth goalie situation, yet has the line of Spezza, Heatley, Alfredson. Carolina has Staal, yet does not have heart and soul in Brind'amour. Playing an inter-divisional opponent is a scary scenerio for the first round.
tj i was agreeing with u. its utterly rediculous that this pp isnt better. zipay for the choices to make the pp better can u add let MATT get the opportunity to run it for one game. It can be like the movie eddie.
no one has mentioned that the rangers have a bunch of guys with cup rings and obviously we know how much this will help during the playoffs. off the top of my head : jagr has 2, shanny has 3, gomez has 2, drury has 1 ..may have forgot guy or 2 or how many guys have... also we have olympic and world cup title too. just a thought when we consider our chances. slats got those guys for this time of year which was smart.
lol matt,
you can run the fowards, ill run the D. ill tell them to SHOOT!!...you tell them to CRASH!..then something is bound to go in.
deal tj, and i want quick movement no standing around. for practice we will play hot potato.
Can't wait for some here to make excuses for Mara, along the lines of "he is short on conditioning." This plus has not had one good game all season. Factor that in, even though Sather-Renney never will.
is Sather-Renney anything like Rodham-Clinton?
If the Flyers get any kind of forecheck going the Rangers are dead. The Rangers D is paper thin even with Rozi in the lineup. Without him their even worse. If the Flyers show up at all it's gonna be a long night for Hank. Prucha not on the PP is a joke. God forbid he get a chance over Straka. Renney sucks!
More like (Dennis) Rodman-Clinton. Now there's a cute couple, and a REAL payback to Slick Bill. She loves guys with earrings, tattoes, and orange hair.
Hey,
Does anyone else realize that the Rangers are tied for the 4th least amount of losses in the NHL with 26?
I understand Renney has nothing to do with that, Renney is only responsible for the problems we have and none of the good, but still, 4th least amount of losses in the whole NHL.
That is something else.
dude,
according to these putzes, you would think the renney era is worse than the ron low era was, or dare i say the bryan trottier era (ouch, i just stabbed myself typing bryan trottier)..how soon they forget
it is comical what these morons think of renney..
my prediction, 3-2 rangers...jagr GW in the 3rd.
TJ - That may be the truest statement ever posted here, he is never given the credit he deserves.
Hmm, I like predictions: 4-1 Rangers...and they score a power play goal!
i always give him credit anno..very frustrating that people hate him for seemingly no reason.
PP goal would be wonderful
who gets the credit for the PP?
man, versus is terrible
they actually called the Rangers the "Broadstreet Blueshirts" before
taking commercials when the play is going on, just awful stuff
yes! We still have a chance to miss the playoffs. Hope we get 0 paints the rest of the way and get Renney dork fired.
The pp would have been nice to have tonight. Thats what i hate about avery he tries to make plays like that way too much. But his positives out weigh his negatives. And malik u gotta hit the guy.
disappointing to not get the extra point, Flyers had way more energy in overtime
for anyone, like Bob, worried about making the playoffs, we are 5 points ahead of the Caps with a game in hand, they have 5 games left.
we beat Jersey in regulation thursday, we are tied with them for 91 points.
we pretty much have a game in hand on everyone but the Devils
no real worries here, Philly is playing their best hockey in awhile
Well if anyone can say anything good after this loss their is something wrong with you. Now I'm not saying that Calli,Pru,Dubi and Drury didn't play their arses off but the rest of the team was sleep walking. Jagr's goal was very nice but after that he and thelooked like they wanted or hoped to win One Nothing. Thats where I can blame Renney because thats his style.Well his style just cost us a point. Again they wait until they get tied or are losing then they decide to turn it on. If they played 60 min that way we wouldn't have to sweat it out in so many games. The pp sucked as usual. Then avery makes a bonehead pass and malik is so slow the cryer gets behind him ,and instead of taking him out he stick checks him and he gets a flutter shot that fooled Hank. He was fooled but he still should have had it. Likw I said if anyone can be happy or act positive after that game they are drinking too much Rangeraide. Lets hope the next game is better than this and it was at home . No exscuse ,none at all.
why bother making the playoffs when you have no chance of winning?
Bob, I believe that is a very dumb thing to say.
vince,
I think you are pretty much right about them hoping to win 1-0.
There was no sense of urgency at all up until the Flyers got the tying goal.
it's definitely disappointing tonight.
Last friday was a solid 1 point, tonight was a disappointing 1 point.
But at least they got the point, Devils are playing worse than us right now, it's a must 2 points at MSG on thursday night.
Ive said this in the past this team has too much speed to not attack at will. i trust hank to keep us in games.
TJ i just spoke to zipay who spoke to renney and he told him about my bet so if u want to spilt the 10k with me be at the rangers facility at 1030 tomorrow. weve got a pp to fix.
Matt let's take the 10K and meet Dude at a Holiday Inn and do what Ranger Fans do best.
Square in the man shorts.
A Rangers loss definitely brings out the morons.
Dude who is this ass who pretends to be everybody?
Vincea and dude...
Ice worm is on our board right now as well.
Love those predictions. Idiots!
The Rangers are 10th - not 4th - in total losses which include O.T. /shootout losses. Slight difference between the two, but then math, like english vocabulary, would not seem to be your forte.
do you get a point when you lose in O.T./shootout?
last time I checked you did.
So, there have only been 26 games where the Rangers did not get a point, which is tied for fourth lowest in the league.
YOU LOSE AGAIN!
When did "Cucic" get called up by the Bruins from the "OHL" again?
Mid December was it?