Sunday, April 25, 2010

Torts: New York Can Be a Great Advantage

In a recent sit down with Larry Brook at the New York Post John Tortorella spoke about the team sticking up for each other and the obstacles of playing in New York...

"We have a lot of young guys here on the team. When I talk about New York, I just want to make sure that we all understand what comes first, because if we do, there is no place greater to take advantage of the opportunities that follow."

...Torts is right this city can take down even the best player if they're not careful. Way too many distractions.

Torts also said he was happy with Brandon Dubinsky's retaliation on Toronto's Jeff Finger after he crushed Marian Gaborik into the boards in a late season game...

"Our players are going to look after each other. That's the kind of team I want and that's the type of team we'll have. We're going to protect one another. We will not allow our top players to be targets."

...this was a problem at the beginning of the season when Lundqvist was being run almost every game and no one came to his aid. But after the Girardi non-response to the Gaborik/Carcillo incident I felt the team finally got the message that they needed to stick up for each other. And we saw that in Dubinsky's retaliation on Finger and then Girardi on Hartnell.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I like Shelly and the 4th line - it was our best line in the last 5 games of the season but I still miss Colton Orr.

With Colton on the bench other teams think twice before they even consider hitting a player like Gaborik. With Orr it's light's out!