The coach who didn’t want to focus on results for the first 60 games of the season was whistling a different tune yesterday.
“We need to try to find a way to win,” John Tortorella said following the Rangers’ brief practice. “It may not be good for 25 minutes, or it may be great for 40 minutes and lousy for 20, but just don’t lose the hockey game.”
It’s not about development any more, it’s not about being patient, it’s not about evaluating the team’s performance based on scoring chances created and surrendered. That was an acceptable and likely productive approach to the first four months, but this isn’t November or December anymore.
It is, rather, the time of year when gaining two points is essentially the only measure of success for a Rangers team that goes into this afternoon’s match at the Garden against the Flyers in a fight to the finish to make the playoffs after winning just two of the last nine (2-6-1) and nine of 22 (9-11-2) in 2011.
“I don’t think there’s any one specific part of our game that we need to focus on,” Brian Boyle said. “I think we’re in a position where we all have to be better in our own specific assignments and where we all have to raise our level.
“It doesn’t matter if we’re banged up,” he said. “That’s no excuse. The coaches see to it that we get plenty of rest, plus everybody is banged up at this time of year.
“We need to get back to playing to our strengths,” said Boyle, who has been slowed for weeks with a variety of ailments. “We need to be a physical, shot-blocking, forechecking team that dictates the way the game is played.”
Boyle, who has one point in his last seven games (1-0), rejected the notion the Rangers no longer would be able to succeed by outworking their opponents, as they had so often through the first four months.
“If everyone around the league is working harder now, we just have to raise our level a couple of notches, and we know we’re capable of doing that,” Boyle said.
“I have to get in on the forecheck with [Brandon] Prust and Aves [Sean Avery], Gabby [Marian Gaborik] has to score, Artie [Artem Anisimov] has to score and make plays. Whatever our individual strengths are, that’s what we’re responsible for being better at.”
After rallying with a late third-period goal to tie before beating the Capitals in a shootout in Washington on Jan. 24, the Rangers were an estimable 7-12-3 when trailing after two periods. They’re 0-5 since.
They were 15-5-3 after that match in one-goal games. They’re 1-5-1 since. They were 9-14-1 when scoring two goals or fewer. They’re 0-5 since. And after winning in St. Louis on Jan. 8, they were 10-0 in the second games of back-to-backs. They’re 0-4 since that night.
“The games we found a way to win early in the year, we’re finding a way to lose,” Tortorella said. “It’s not gloom and doom with the Rangers, we just have to find the way to make a big play to win us a hockey game instead of losing it.”
And if they do, no one will care very much about how it was done.
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Ruslan Fedotenko, sidelined since Jan. 10 with a shoulder injury that preceded an appendectomy, is 7-10 days away from rejoining the lineup. . . . The Oilers have placed Sheldon Souray on re-entry, but the Rangers do not appear likely to claim the veteran.