John Dellapina at The Blueshirts Blog, reports that it looks like the Ranger players have already forgotten about the "Meltdown in Montreal"...
"In case you were worried, your heroes were hardly a shattered shell or emotional mess upon reconvening for practice today.
Just the opposite, in fact.
Treating Tuesday night’s Meltdown in Montreal as an aberration rather than a sign of the apocalypse, the Rangers went back to work merrily.
Jaromir Jagr reacted appropriately to being barked at by Sean Avery for not passing him the puck early in practice: The Rangers captain spent the rest of the rush drills freezing out the loquacious (except with reporters in recent days) winger, refusing to pass to him at all except for the odd airborne puck or annoying feed into his skates. Jagr clearly enjoyed that and Avery was even chuckling about it after the sixth or seventh time.
Later, during a practice-closing drill in which each group of five had to skate a Herbie (sprint to the far blue line and back) every time one of their quintet missed a penalty shot, Jagr, Michal Rozsival and Marek Malik mockingly took off before Avery even got a chance to pick up the puck at center ice. When Avery beat Henrik Lundqvist (hardly uncommon today), the three and Brandon Dubinsky mobbed Avery as if he had just won a real game — apparently, Avery and Malik are pals again."
...happy to see these guys move on. In Dellapina's story today in the Daily News he reinforces the fact that Tuesday night's game was a fluke as the Rangers had gone 20-1-1 when leading after two periods going into the game.
...I've read on numerous Ranger message boards and blogs that Tuesday night's meltdown will send the Rangers into a tailspin. I disagree with this completely. Just because you blow a lead like that doesn't necessarily mean that the team goes into the tank. I'm sort of embarrassed to admit this, but I'm a New Jersey (soon to be Brooklyn) Nets fan. Back in 2000 the Nets were playing the Celtics in the Eastern Conference Championship. In game three with the series tied at 1-1, the Nets led by 21 points going into the final period, but a tremendous Celtic comeback gave the Celtics a 94-90 victory and a 2-1 series lead. The Nets are demoralized right. Wrong. They came back to win the next three games and go to the NBA Championship. If the Nets could comeback after a horrific meltdown in the Eastern Conference Championship, I think the Rangers should have no problem coming back from a meltdown in February. There's too much veteran leadership on this team not too.
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