Any question about how the Rangers are feeling after winning three in a row was answered at the beginning of Saturday’s practice, when the team spent 15 minutes playing touch football on their practice ice in Westchester.
With a scheduled day off for Super Bowl Sunday, it was the idea of assistant coach Scott Arniel to stage a bit of a competition, with cones on the ice as end-zone markers and a five-man teams skating routes and quarterbacks yelling “Omaha.”
“We haven’t had three days [off] in a while,” coach Alain Vigneault said. “We wanted to lighten up the first part, then we had some work to get done, which we did. It worked out pretty good; Super Bowl [Sunday], and we had our own little Super Bowl.”
Following Friday’s 4-1 win over the Islanders at the Garden, the Rangers don’t play again until Tuesday, when the young and talented Avalanche come to town. That’s followed on Thursday with another home match against the Oilers before the Blueshirts head off to Pittsburgh to take on the first-place Penguins and commence their two-week Olympic break.
“It’s nice to have some days off, have some fun,” said Mats Zuccarello, once catching a pass on a crossing route and then trying to pass it forward again, his Norwegian upbringing shining through. “I think as a group and as a team, you go through this whole season, everything is serious, so if you have the chance to enjoy yourself, than that’s the right way to go.”
Marc Staal called the MVP of the game fellow defenseman Anton Stralman, who caught a touchdown pass and then dunked the ball over the net, which acted as goalposts for the extra points as well. Ryan McDonagh also caught a touchdown pass, and did his best Tim Tebow celebration, kneeling on the ice in prayer.
Alternate captain Brad Richards spent some time at quarterback, and Vigneault had a rather cutting assessment of his play.
“You found out that Richie might be a quarterback in hockey, but not in football,” the coach said. “He wasn’t very good there.”