It doesn’t matter where this Game 3 of the opening round was played. There is no excuse whatsoever for the puny performance the Rangers trotted out onto the Garden ice in their 3-1 defeat to the Canadiens on Sunday night. What a disappointment. What a letdown. “We didn’t play up to our standards at all,” […]
Read MoreWonder what Patrick Roy thinks about this. Any time first-year Rangers defenseman Nick Holden’s name had been brought up this season, coach Alain Vigneault would reference the heaping praise he heard from Roy, who had coached Holden with the Avalanche before this summer’s trade brought the blueliner to Broadway. But after a sustained slump that […]
Read MoreIf the balance has gone awry and coach Alain Vigneault thinks his Rangers are getting away from their high-paced, high-skill game in favor of a more physical brand of hockey needed in the playoffs and enforced by the Canadiens, then a lineup change certainly could help alleviate that. And he did his part in stoking […]
Read MoreMax Pacioretty is filled with fond memories of Madison Square Garden. Now in his ninth season with the Canadiens, Pacioretty spent most of his life as a Rangers fan, riding the rails from New Canaan, Conn., to midtown Manhattan, where he’d be enthralled watching Mark Messier on the ice, and “Dancing Larry” on the Jumbotron. […]
Read MoreAlexander Radulov’s postseason legacy seemed set. Before this season — before becoming the most dominant player in the Canadiens’ first-round playoff series against the Rangers — Radulov skated in the shadows of Russia for most of the past nine years, only playing nine games in the NHL since 2008. But in his brief second stint […]
Read MoreThe slowness in the Rangers’ all-around game has seeped into their power play, which has gone 0-for-10 with the team down 2-1 in its best-of-seven, first-round series against the Canadiens. So going into Game 4 on Tuesday night at the Garden, the hope is that the man-advantage can start making quicker decisions. It began with […]
Read MoreAlain Vigneault is entitled to a large measure of credit for the Rangers’ comparative success since manning the bench prior to the 2013-14 season, and the coach has been rewarded for it by virtue of a midseason contract extension through 2019-20 under which he will earn more than a combined $8.25 million over the final […]
Read MoreIt wasn’t always this way at the Garden. Because there was a time not so very long ago that the Rangers thrived on home ice in the playoffs, a time when the Blueshirts won a pair of Game 7s within 16 days in 2012; won an elimination Game 6 in 2013; won another Game 7, […]
Read MoreThese are words Mika Zibanejad is going to live with, for good or for bad, as long as he is a Ranger. He forever will be linked to Derick Brassard, for whom he was traded this summer as “Big Game Brass” was sent to his hometown Senators. Before Zibanejad’s first postseason with the Blueshirts started, […]
Read MoreThe Bruins were just looking to make a change. They didn’t realize it would revive their rival’s season. Less than four years after leading Boston to its second Stanley Cup finals in three seasons — winning in 2011 — the Bruins fired coach Claude Julien on Feb. 7, two months before he was to complete […]
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