Forward Thinking Puts Rangers Behind

Five Rangers forwards on the ice for the power play. Good news: The puck goes in the net, which was the intent, right? Bad news: Breakdown, and the puck is in your net.

Rangers Coach John Tortorella took a risk in the second period of the Rangers-Kings game on Tuesday night in Los Angeles. The coach was trying to get his team going. Zeros on both sides of the board. Here was an opportunity to silence a few critics and a large crowd at Staples Center.

It sounded like a plan, that is, until the Kings' Anze Kopitar glided past the forwards-turned-point men Olli Jokinen and Chris Drury to beat Henrik Lundqvist for a short-handed goal and a 1-0 lead.



Tortorella takes a soft one from MSG's Sam Rosen in the postgame scrum after the Rangers' 2-1 loss to the Kings. Yes, the five-forwards no-defense scheme was a plan, the Rangers' coach tells Rosen. Come on, Sam. (Either that, or the inmates are truly running the asylum.)

And that's it for the discussion. A pretty quiet night for Tortorella.

(Note to reporters at the conference: SPEAK UP!!! If your question is worth asking while the tape is rolling, let the audience in on your thoughts. I haven't heard that much mumbling since I was 10, when my mother quizzed my father and I as to the identity of the person who kicked the basketball through picture window one early spring Saturday morning in northern Colorado.

And if you said that it was my father who badly missed his trick shot into the hoop, you are right. That shot cost him $500 for the shredded curtains, $150 for the glass and $400 for the plumber. Plumber? Indeed. To make up for the trick shot fiasco, my dad decided to work off the shame by turning on the hose and giving the patio slab the first cleaning of the early spring. Too bad he didn't drain and disconnect that hose in the fall. Ice jam. Popped pipe. Water cascading in the basement, where my mom was working off her disgust by folding the laundry on a Saturday afternoon. Dad, this whole episode still does not look good on your permanent record.)

Back to Tuesday night's action in Los Angeles. Perhaps feeling unsatisfied about Tortorella's discussion of the blown power play, reporters turned to Kopitar, who was more than happy to tell you, in words and in facial cues, that Jokinen and Drury were quite generous in their spacing on the ice.



It was a late night in the Lounge. A 10:30 pm Eastern start. Stayed up to watch the postgame show on MSG and then watched the full hour of "On the Fly" recap on the NHL Network. At 3:30 am, I went to bed with a smile on my face. I was thinking of that ABA red-white-and-blue ball going through the picture window.

Nothing risked, nothing broken.