Marrrr-tyyyyyyy.....

Vinny Prospal returned for the Rangers and the offense exploded on the Devils with a season high 51 shots. Unfortunately, Martin Brodeur was standing in front of them and nothing got by. I guess you can give them an "A" for effort though as they do salvage a point (9-1-3 in last 13).

Henrik Lundqvist and Brodeur were fantastic in this game. It was about as exciting as a 1-0 game could be. Back and forth action and spectacular saves at both ends. Brodeur was just better stopping every shot he faced all night and adding to his constantly growing NHL record of 107 career shutouts.

The difference for the Blueshirts this year is the shootout has become a weakness and is losing them games. You can almost feel every player sawing his stick off in his hand skating in. Erik Christensen, who is supposed to very good at it, didn't even get a shot off. I've never seen a team that doesn't get shots off in a shootout as much as this one (see Kotalik and Callahan the other day against Atlanta). John Tortorella continues to trot Marian Gaborik out there but he's been awful in his career and this year going 1 for 5 so far. But really who else can he send out there?

The problem remains scoring and where is it going to come from? Prospal played 21:14 in this one and Gaborik was good... but no goals. When will someone else step up for this team? It just can't be that they're running into a hot goaltender every time out... it just can't.

Notes:
The Rangers have lost 6 straight overtime/shootout games since beating Florida in a shootout November 25th... Fans chanting "Marrrr-ttyyyyy" before the shootout apparently didn't bother him.

Prospal returns...

Vinny Prospal will be back in the lineup against the Devils tonight. He's been out since December 26th when he injured his right knee in the loss to the Islanders. The Rangers went 4-3 in his absence.

The interesting question now is what happens to Erik Christensen? He's had 3 goals and 4 assists in 6 games playing with Marian Gaborik since Prospal went down. I don't see why you couldn't have a line of Gaborik-Christensen-Prospal so we'll see how it plays out.

The Devils come in 31-11-1 this year. One reason is because they're consistent but another one is they can score goals... into the opposition's net and everything. They're led by Zach Parise's 20 goals and 26 assists but they also have 5 other players with over 10 goals. The Rangers have two... TWO GUYS with 10 goals or more and Ryan Callahan just got to that number.

Hopefully Prospal's return can help the Rangers but it's not as if they were scoring a lot before he went down. I have no reason to believe the scoring is going to heat up any time soon.