John Tortorella seems to have real expectations for Arron Asham, and that doesn’t include the winger changing who he is or how he plays.
“I don’t expect him to be a saint,” the Rangers coach said before last night’s 6-3 drubbing at the hands of the Penguins, Asham’s former team.
In his first game as a Ranger, Asham was far from a saint.
After Asham sat out Saturday’s opener to finish a four-game suspension that carried over from last season, Tortorella decided to reward him by sending him out in the starting lineup, standing next to the Penguins’ Tanner Glass, a larger man, but with similar pugilistic instincts.
It took them two seconds after the drop of the puck to drop the gloves, and for a good two minutes, they traded big overhand punches along the boards near the benches.
“High marks for Ash,” Tortorella said. “That’s what [ticks] me off a little bit. Ash goes in there and hangs in there and turns it around and we don’t come in behind him. When a player does something like that, as long as he did that, the other guys need to feed off that and do their thing and that has not happened.”
The Rangers played a very sloppy game following Asham’s fight, following the season-opening 3-1 loss in Boston on Saturday when they were pushed around. Asham, known for his intangibles, decided to try to ingratiate himself to the Garden faithful and light a spark under his team.
“All fights are to try and get your bench going, get the crowd into it,” Asham said. “I thought it was a good time to do it, but it didn’t work out.”
* To make room for Asham, the Rangers sent 29-year-old winger Brandon Segal down to the AHL’s Connecticut Whale. Segal played 5:21 on Saturday as the team waited for Asham to come off of suspension.
“As I told [Segal] and I’ll tell you, I’m concerned about the tempo,” Tortorella said. “Just the speed of the game is something I’d like to see him work on down there. But he’s not done here.”
* Chris Kreider took a vicious hit from Brooks Orpik in the waning minutes of the game, skating with his head down across the Penguins blue line. Orpik lowered his shoulder and took Kreider off his feet and to the ice, where he stayed for a couple of moments before skating off on his own.
Tortorella had no problem with the hit, saying, “That’s a clean hit.”
There was no update on Kreider’s status as of last night.