It's only preseason but try telling that to the Rangers and Devils, who already played one intense exhibition at The Garden the other night with New York prevailing 4-3 on Marian Gaborik's power play overtime winner. The game featured two scraps along with the Devils' unveiling of their Dream Line featuring Zach Parise, Travis Zajac and Ilya Kovalchuk. The lethal trio combined for all three goals with Parise tying it with 1:30 left forcing OT.
On the flip side, Alexander Frolov got off to a good start with his new team, scoring and setting up Gaborik twice. Also impressing was top prospect Derek Stepan, who centered the new Ranger top line for two of three periods and didn't look out of place, notching a helper. The new and improved Brian Boyle fought and also beat Martin Brodeur with a strong power move, boosting his chances. New backup Martin Biron also debuted for the Blueshirts, looking sharp in two periods despite permitting two rockets (Zajac one-timer, Kovalchuk breakaway).
Tonight, the bitter Hudson rivals do it again at The Rock. Figure the Devils to have their new A Line with '00 Cup members Patrik Elias and Jason Arnott reunited where they'll team with team captain Jamie Langenbrunner. Perhaps new backup Johan Hedberg will see some action as well. For the Rangers, we could see Artem Anisimov and Evgeny Grachev along with Pavel Valentenko. In their second preseason game, Henrik Lundqvist probably will be in net.
The game can be seen on MSG tonight at 7 ET.
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2 comments:
So I guess it was the same nonsense today, Devils and Kovy yapping towards Avery and him punking us like it was 2008. At least it's only preseason, if you're gonna go after the bugger now's the time to do it.
Funny that I only saw enough of this game to turn it on in the OT just before Del Zotto scored...so we're 0-0-3 in the preseason lol. I did tape the game and MSG's HNL show after, and I watched the game Thursday.
My one observation offhand is that it seems we have a lot more defensive prospects either ready or close to it than our younger forwards - and that might influence what's to come soon enough (Cap d-day is ten days away for us). Although our D as a whole hasn't been all that great, it is preseason after all.
Avery has a new bf and his name is Ilya Kovalchuk. :P
I do wonder if they're better off w/o him. The other crop of forwards have been impressive.
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