NHL

RANGERS FIRE RENNEY

The Rangers today fired head coach Tom Renney after losing 10 of their past 12 games, including last night’s 3-2 overtime defeat at the hands of the Maple Leafs.

After the players had a brief workout this morning, general manager Glen Sather broke the news to the team, who then met with Renney.

Renney will be replaced by former Tampa Bay coach John Tortorella.

TORTORELLA HIRED

After winning 40-plus games in each of the past three seasons — something the Rangers hadn’t done since 1974 — and beginning this season 10-2-1, the Rangers have struggled to find consistent success, going 21-21-6.

“There’s a guy whose given his heart and soul to this organization, and wants nothing more than for us to win,” captain Chris Drury said of Renney. “We clearly didn’t play well enough for him certainly in this last month.

“But on the bright side, I guess, there’s 21 games left and we’re right in the thick of things.”

With 69 points, the Rangers sit in a tie for fifth place in the Eastern Conference, two points ahead of ninth-place Carolina and five ahead of 10th-place Pittsburgh.

The top eight teams make the playoffs.

“It’s a tough part of the business, there’s no doubt about it,” Scott Gomez said. “You don’t like to see it happen … as players we feel 100 percent responsible, but we still have a lot of games left, we still have a position where we can get in the playoffs.”

After a win over Carolina on Jan. 27, the Rangers trailed the Devils by one point in the Atlantic Division and sat fourth in the East.

This morning, at 31-23-7, they trailed the Devils by 10 points.

In four years behind the bench for the Rangers, Renney, 53, was 164-121-42. The team also fired assistant coach Perry Pearn.

Renney took over the team almost five years to the day, with 20 games remaining in the 2003-04 season. That team went 5-11-4 down the stretch and did not make the playoffs.

“It’s a new experience for me. I’ve never been on a team where they’ve fired the coach,” Henrik Lundqvist said. “Tom is a great man … I wish him the best.

“This is part of the business, I guess, when you don’t get the results that you need. It’s kind of tough to change the whole team; it’s easy to change the coach, obviously. It’s a tough day for everybody, but we have to deal with it today and then we have to move on.”