John Tortorella Loses his Head

On Wednesday night New York Rangers coach John Tortorella was his usual fiery self when talking about their 2-1 loss at home against their number one cross town rivals the New York Islanders. What really bothered Tortorella was that his team who haven’t won in five straight games showed no desperation in the first period as they were outshot 10-3 and trailed 1-0 heading to the second. “The thing that’s unacceptable about tonight’s game, and we’re trying to stay positive around here, trying to work our way through it, but when we play like that for 20 minutes in a game like this in a back-to-back situation, it’s unacceptable,” Tortorella said. “There has to be something done, and we’ll see along the way before (Thursday) night’s game. We’ll see where we go with them.”  Meanwhile the Islanders who were coming off a 7-1 drubbing on Monday against the Florida Panthers got goals from Jon Sim and Blake Comeau and a 25 save performance from Dwayne Roloson who came within 55 seconds of recording a shutout. “I don’t care if we win 10-9 or 11-10 or whatever, as long as we win the hockey game,” Roloson said. “We were doing the little things that we had to do to win in the first period and we continued that all the way through for 60 minutes.” This was an important win for Roloson who was didn’t complete Monday’s game after surrendering five goals on only 23 shots. The Rangers who are badly scuffling with a 1-6-2 record in their last nine games have lost both their meetings this season against the Islanders will get another chance on Thursday in Long Island to get some payback.