Rangers 3, Marion Gaborik 5

Yup, you're reading that right. Marion Gaborik scored more goals than the Rangers' three tonight, recording a franchise high five goals for the Minnesota Wild. Pierre-Marc Bouchard scored another for the Wild, assisted by Gaborik, to make it a 6-3 loss for the Blueshirts.

Michal Rozsival, Martin Straka and Nigel Dawes scored for the Rangers, who came out strong again to begin the game and jumped out to an early 1-0 lead on Rozsival's slapshot from the left point. The turning point in the game was when Petr Prucha was crushed by a hard elbow by Minnesota's Brent Burns along the boards. No penalty was called on Burns, but Tom Renney took an "Abusing the Officials" penalty. It was the first I have ever seen that written in a boxscore. From there, the air was let out of the Rangers' sails. Chris Drury took an unsportsmanlike penalty later in the period as well for saying something to an official after being cross checked to the ice. All in all, it was a tough game for the Rangers.

Henrik Lundqvist looked good most of the night, but stopped only 12 shots. He made some great saves, but Minnesota scored some pretty goals. Jaromir Jagr was useless on the ice tonight. He was to blame for two of Minnesota's goals due to his lack of hustle, backchecking, afraid to get hit, stick checking and overall lazy play. There wasn't much physicality, and Roszival lost his cool at the end, throwing an elbow at Gaborik, earning himself a 10 minute misconduct.

All in all, this was Marion Gaborik's night. He looked like he was going to score every time he hit the ice. The Rangers played well, but not well enough to win. Having the few bad calls bother them did them no good either, and got killed when they were a man down.

There's no use harping on a disheartening loss because we're back in action against a tough Colorado team tomorrow night. The game's on MSG2 for those of you in the New York area, and will be starting at 9 pm EST. Hopefully we come out fired up after a tough night tonight.

Back tomorrow with a pregame and any lineup changes.