New York Rangers' coach John Tortorella frustrated, Marian Gaborik moving on from benching -NHL Update
After losing Game 2 of the 2012 National Hockey League (NHL) Stanley Cup Eastern Conference Finals against New Jersey Devils at the Madison Square Garden, it was easy to see that New York Rangers’ head coach, John Tortorella, was extremely frustrated and
dissatisfied with his team’s performance.
Veteran Rangers’ right winger, Marian Gaborik, was benched by the coach in Game 2 after he failed to step up on a number of incidents, which some would term as costing New York the matchup.
Tortorella was reported to be furious with Gaborik’s performance and decided to teach him a lesson by forcing him to sit on the bench in the final minutes of regulation, during which David Clarkson of New Jersey beat Henrik Lundqvist for the game-winning
goal.
Now with that incident behind them, Gaborik termed it as a lesson learned and will definitely be better come Saturday when the two teams face-off for the tie-breaking Game 3 contest.
"I don't want to talk about it," Gaborik said. "It happened. I'm going to focus on (Saturday's) game, so is everybody else. We need to be better. I need to be better. That's the bottom line."
Teammates are also confident that Gaborik will not being going through a slump and will certainly bounce back when they need him the most in the upcoming playoff match.
"Oh, he'll bounce back," centre Brad Richards said. "He's been to the conference finals in the West before. He knows what those plays mean. We've all gone through it. That's a coaching decision, not a players' decision, but we expect him to have a great
game and he wants to do that. He's one of the most important players in our line-up here in the Eastern Conference Finals."
Gaborik led the New York Rangers in scoring with 41 goals in all 82 games played to make them the top seeded team from the East. He has been a major contributor in 16 postseason games so far with 10 points (4 goals, 6 assists) and needs to be a part of Game
3 for Rangers to win.
It will be interesting to see what Gaborik has learned from the benching and how it will affect his performance.
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