New York Rangers John Tortorella defends team's playing strategy -NHL Update
Heavy criticism followed the New York Rangers due to their defensive playing strategies which involved some controversial shot blocking. Defending his team, head coach John Tortorella called the people who talked against his team “idiots” during an interview
with ESPN NewYork 98.7 on “The Michael Kay Show.”
"I think the people that are writing about us with our shot blocking ... I think they're idiots," Tortorella said.
"I think they're disrespecting our players. I think they're disrespecting our team. We don't sit in our meetings and say forget about carrying the puck and trying to score a goal and make a play, let's just block shots all night long,” Tortorella added.
One reason that New York’s shot blocking tactics that came under fire was because it became a way to shutout the opposing team from scoring at all. The National Hockey League (NHL) has been trying to make each game a high scoring one in order to increase
the excitement, but Rangers have not been participating in that.
"Blocking shots is part of playing proper defence and we've got a couple of guys covering our team that don't get it. And that really upsets me. Not for myself, but for the players that do it. It's part of us. It's part of what these guys want to do," Tortorella
said.
Having high scoring games is one thing that the NHL has always wanted to do ever since the 2004-2005 NHL regular season was locked out. With 365 shots blocked in the postseason alone and 1,338 shots during the previous regular season, New York is certainly
in the top five of the list in that regard.
Now that the New York Rangers are out of the Stanley Cup Playoffs after being ousted by the New Jersey Devils, they need to focus on improving their overall structure in order to make a better run next time around.
Ending the regular season as the top Eastern Conference team, New York Rangers failed to get into the finals despite being the favourites to do so. It will definitely be interesting to see how Rangers will play next time around and whether they will be able
to make a significant run.
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