New York Rangers head coach John Tortorella admitted that Game 5 was a “tough one” for his team to lose to the New Jersey Devils. He was fairly positive about his team’s chances of bouncing back from that 5-3 loss and 3-2 series deficit, though.
“We’ve been through it before,” Tortorella said. “It’s a hard one to lose the way we lost tonight, crawling back into it, but we’ll go through our day tomorrow. We’ll regroup. And, again, I have a tremendous amount of confidence in how we’ll react to this.”
Perpetuating that confidence and positivity, Torts was emphatic about the Rangers being able to take some good things out of that tough defeat.
“Sure, you spend some time when you’re struggling in the game and learn from your mistakes,” Tortorella said. “You can also spend some time with some of the good things you’ve done to get ready for our next game.”
So far, the Rangers have shown the ability to roll with playoff punches. They came back from a 3-2 deficit against Ottawa, bounced back from an awful Game 6 against Washington advance thanks to a great Game 7 output and now must win two games in a row against New Jersey.
Tortorella seems positive that this team can grind out yet another series.