Goal Line Report
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Change on the Way?
by Patrick Hoffman on 02/25/09 at 04:30 PM ET
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With John Tortorella making his season debut as the New York Rangers head coach tonight against the Toronto Maple leafs, many fans are hoping that this will signal lots of positive changes.
Based on what Tortorella told the press corps yesterday, he wants to instill confidence in his troops and give them the creativity that they need to play effectively. At the same time, however, he also mentioned that he does not want to fall into the same trap he did last season with the Tampa Bay Lightning, where his team went all out on offense and suffered on the defensive end.
With that said, Tortorealla is going to do everything he can to get some offensive chemistry into this lineup. For one thing, expect to see a lot less of the fourth line and more of the top three lines as Tortorella believes in playing his best players as much as possible in order to give the team the best chance to win a hockey game.
According to Steve Zipay’s blog earlier today, the lines will be as follows:
Offense:
Naslund-Gomez-Zherdev
Dubinsky-Drury-Callahan
Dawes-Korpikoski-Prucha (who we predict will play many, many games for Torts)
Sjostrom-Betts-Orr
Defense:
Rozsival-Redden
Staal-Girardi
Kalinin-Rietz
While I like the way the offense looks, I am not a fan of the team’s defensive pairings. Pairing Michal Rozsival with Wade Redden could be asking for trouble, given the way that they have played this season. The pairing of Kalinin and Rietz is also a bit worrisome but may be the coaching staff sees something that we don’t.
Don’t expect these lines to be the be all and end all of lineups but let’s see where this takes us tonight. A win would certainly be the right direction for this struggling hockey club.
Filed in: | Goal Line Report | Permalink
Tags: John+Tortorella, Kalinin, Michal+Rozsival, New+York+Rangers, Rietz, Steve+Zipay, Tampa+Bay+Lightning, Toronto+Maple+Leafs, Wade+Redden,
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About Goal Line Report
The Goal Line Report will focus on all things Eastern Conference. Do I have a bias towards the Eastern Conference just because I am a New Yorker? No, but it certainly does make things easier! I’ll make my opinions known on Eastern Conference news bits (as often as I can), big games, hot and cold players, trades (I don’t make things up) and anything and everything else related to the Eastern Conference that I think is important for hockey fans to know. I will, in every sense of the word, be the beast of the East while also making sure to drop my thoughts on other hockey news items.
I, Patrick Hoffman, have covered the NHL since 2003 and have worked for a variety of hockey media sources including: Stan Fischler, Spector’s Hockey, TheHockeyNews.com, HockeyBuzz.com, McKeen’s Hockey, Blueshirt Bulletin, XM Home Ice Channel Hockey Blog, HockeyPrimeTime.com, FantasyHockey.com. NY SportsDay, and HokejaVestnesis.com.
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