Updates from Practice: Drury Visits Doc, Kotalik to First Line and More

According to Andrew Gross over at Rangers Rants, the Rangers practice was ended abruptly by head coach John Tortorella today at the practice facility. Much like warm-ups before a game, some players prefer to stay out on the ice and take additional shots even after most teammates have left for the locker-room at the conclusion of practice. Well, there would be none of that today as Tortorella made it clear that the session had ended, and he meant ENDED.

“They had enough,” Tortorella said. “They were on the ice long enough. I wanted to get them off.”

Captain Chris Drury, who has been out with a concussion, has supposedly had "a number of good days" as Tortorella put it, and will see the team doctor today for an evaluation later today. This "evaluation" may finally put timetable on when Chris will be returning to the lineup, but nothing is gaurunteed.

As noted in the title, Ales Kotalik will be moved up to the first line with the red-hot Marian Gaborik and Vinny Prospal. Tortorella made this move late in Tuesday's game against the Capitals and will start with it on Saturday against the Florida Panthers. I believe that this has the potential to work quite well as Kotes has the big shot and both Gabs and Vinny both can pass efficiently. Kotalik does not have the most speed on the team, but neither does Prospal so it will be interesting to see if the trio can form any chemistry over the next few games.

“(Kotalik) can score goals,” Tortorella said. “Again, we’re trying to keep the puck and I think he can add that element to that line where I just don’t think Lise has done the job there. We’ve tried a lot of different people there. A lot of the onus belongs on Vinny and Gabby but we also need somebody to help them out."

And lastly, a good portion of today's practice was spent working on the powerplay. Clearly the powerplay has struggled as of late and has lacked puck control. It seemed like the Rangers could not hold the puck in the zone the other night and sort of made it easy for the Caps to shut them down. Tortorella says that the first thing that must happen is for more shots to be taken, including from rookie defenseman Michael Del Zotto.

“It’s a 19-year-old guy, you’ve got Gabby (Marian Gaborik) over here with his stick on the ice and you’ve got Kots (Ales Kotalik) over here with his stick on the ice. And you’ve got a 19-year-old who respects the hierarchy of the locker room. That’s where it comes to the coaches telling him to do it and telling the players flanking him he’s going to do it and take him off the hook a little bit.”

Hopefully an update on Drury later....
(Image courtesy of AP Photo)