It’s going to be hard not to look ahead, but luckily for the Rangers, there are very few things higher on coach John Tortorella’s to-do list than staying focused on the now.
Thursday night, the Penguins will visit Madison Square Garden to play what essentially is the first game in months that could swing the balance atop the Atlantic Division. Pittsburgh has won eight straight as it faces the Bruins this afternoon, and has cut the Rangers’ lead in the division to four points.
And by Thursday, the Penguins could have star captain Sidney Crosby back in the lineup against the Rangers, after he started full-contact skating over the weekend in the wake of concussion symptoms that have forced him to miss all but eight games this season.
But before that — way before, in Tortorella’s mind — the Rangers open their pivotal seven-game homestand with the Islanders tonight, a rival who always plays them hard. The Islanders will be playing the second game of a back-to-back and have beaten the Rangers twice this season in their five games (2-3). With a couple more wins, the Isles will be in the thick of the race for the final playoff spot in the East.
“The league is unforgiving,” Tortorella said before Thursday’s 4-1 loss in Ottawa. “If you’re not taking care of business each day, trying to get better as a team, not only working on your strengths but trying to figure out some of your weaknesses and trying to find your way there, it goes pretty quickly away from you and it’s tough to get back.”
Tortorella recently has seen that process first hand as his team comes off three consecutive losses in regulation for the first time all season. After dropping games in Ottawa and Chicago, he said on both occasions the team is “finding a way to lose.”
Most of the year, the Rangers have been comfortably atop the standings. When asked in Ottawa by the Canadian media about how he keeps his first-place team away from complacency, Tortorella’s precognitive response still resonates, now more than it did then.
“Don’t even go there with the standings,” he snapped. “There is so much hockey to be played.”