This season wasn't much fun in New York for slumping forward Marian Gaborik. He wasn't scoring goals the way he was used to, and he and his Rangers teammates found themselves in an unexpected fight just to get into the playoffs.
The New York Rangers made a big push in trading for Rick Nash to improve their chances of winning a championship for the first time since 1994.
The Columbus Blue Jackets finally met captain Rick Nash's midseason request and dealt him Monday with a third-round pick and a minor-league defenseman to the New York Rangers for centers Brandon Dubinsky and Artem Anisimov, defenseman Tim Erixon and a first-round pick next year.
A year after missing the playoffs for the first time since 1996, the New Jersey Devils are going back to the Stanley Cup finals, thanks to a rookie, a 40-year-old goaltender and a coach who'd never been to the postseason in the NHL.
The Devils turned a stellar first nine minutes and an opportunistic final five into a stirring victory over the Rangers that moved New Jersey within one win of a trip to the Stanley Cup finals.
John Tortorella stood out again at a playoff news conference. Only this time it was because of his feistiness toward the New Jersey Devils and not for his brevity and contentiousness with the media.
Coach John Tortorella tweaked the New York Rangers' top two lines during practice on Friday ahead of Game 5 of the Eastern Conference playoff series against the Ottawa Senators.
A third-period penalty on Artem Anisimov looked to be just what the Washington Capitals needed. Instead, some aggressive play and a bad bounce led to a New York Rangers short-handed goal that all but put the game out of reach.
As so often happens in playoff hockey, the more desperate team won Sunday. That would be John Tortorella's rough-and-tumble Rangers, who were in a 2-0 hole in the series and – at Verizon Center, at least – couldn't find the back of the net with a GPS.
