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Time To Step Up
by Patrick Hoffman on 10/31/09 at 10:02 PM ET
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With the exception of Monday night’s 5-2 win over the Phoenix Coyotes, the New York Rangers have been MIA for the past week and a half.
This was especially true of last night’s 3-2 loss to the Minnesota Wild. For the most part, the Blueshirts were outplayed by a usually offensively-challenged Wild hockey team and as such, lost for the second straight game.
Yes, the team was without the likes of Marian Gaborik, Christopher Higgins and Sean Avery but other players such as Brandon Dubinsky, Ryan Callahan, and Chris Drury need to pick up the torch and be the players that the team is paying them to be. This message is not so much for Callahan and Dubinsky but more for Drury, who seems to be pressing offensively.
The Rangers get the chance to right the ship tomorrow afternoon at Madison Square Garden when they take on the Boston Bruins. The Bruins come into tomorrow’s matinee with a 6-5-1 record, good for eighth in the Eastern Conference. However, the B’s are coming off a 2-0 shutout over the Edmonton Oilers this afternoon thanks to some hard work by the team’s fourth line and a shutout by netminder Tuukka Rask, who also shutout the Blueshirts last season.
The team is hoping that they will get back at least two out of three when it comes to Gabby, Avery and Higgins. According to Andrew Gross of Ranger Rants, the three players seemed hopeful about playing tomorrow afternoon:
Talked to Gaborik, Higgins and Avery and all three sounded hopeful. Gaborik admitted he wouldn’t be 100 percent but said he could probably play at less than 100 percent now. Whereas yesterday in Minnesota he said he didn’t think he could be a piece of the puzzle, he said today he believes he could be a piece tomorrow. The big test for Gaborik was doing some contact battle drills during practice in a three-on-three setting. He was OK with it. Avery practiced without a brace. For Avery, this is a recurrence of the right knee injury he suffered in training camp, an MCL sprain that kept him out of the season’s first four games. Higgins said he felt good but “couldn’t guarantee tomorrow.”
The Rangers need to change some things and win tomorrow afternoon over the Bruins would certainly be a start.
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Tags: Boston+Bruins, New+York+Rangers,
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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.
For questions, comments or to talk hockey, feel free to send me an e-mail at .