For those expecting concrete news to come out of today’s
New York Rangers practice you will be sadly disappointed as the day had more of
a dump it deep in the zone and wait until tomorrow to see if they can chase it
down feel to it. There are updates for
Ruslan Fedotenko, Marc Staal and Marian Gaborik to sift through though.
In the good news department, Ruslan Fedotenko took
part in practice again today, this time with some contact and battling. Signs point to a return in the very near
future, with it being possible for tomorrow night against Washington, but they
will not know that for sure until tomorrow morning according to Tortorella. During practice he skated along with Avery,
Newbury and Prust. Getting Fedotenko
back would be a huge lift for the club as they are only 5-8-1 since he sprained
his shoulder on January 19th and then had his recovery sidetracked
by an emergency appendectomy. If people
did not appreciate how important Fedotenko was to the forecheck while he was in
there they certainly are aware of it now.
In other positive news, Jesse Spector
of the Daily News reports that Marian Gaborik is said to be feeling better, but
that coach Tortorella was unsure if he was symptom free. The team ran some blood work on Gaborik to
see if there was any deficiencies in the results, but the coach was not sure
what they were looking for and the results had not come back yet to his
knowledge.
Now that you have been built up with good news it is
time for the potentially bad news of the day.
Marc Staal, who twisted his knee Tuesday against Carolina, sat out
practice today, and is said to be having soreness in the knee. The main complaint though according to Jim Cerny, is about
a lack of strength that he feels in the knee.
Staal will test it out tomorrow morning to see if he can go, but Andrew Gross
labeled him as “iffy” for tomorrow’s contest against Ovechkin at the Capitals.
No doubt that missing Staal in the lineup would be a
huge loss for the defense core, but it might be better to sit him for a game
than push him back when he is not ready to go and risk prolonging the issue.
There were a couple of playful stories relayed out by
the beat writers that involved Marc Staal today. The first was how he was getting flak from
the guys in the locker room, especially Martin Biron, for not practicing
today. The other was about Staal refuses
to call his mother right now and is keeping communication strictly text based
while she “cools down.”
Jesse
Spector passes along these quotes:
“I have not talked to my mom about it yet,” Marc said. “She’s given me a few text messages, but I haven’t spoken too her on the phone. Not until I let her calm down. That’s probably the worst conversation out of the (family).”
