Rangers lead NHL in bench minors, Tortorella calls it ‘stupid’

After getting dinged for too many men during the second period of last night’s win over Boston, the New York Rangers now lead the NHL with six bench minor penalties through the first 12 games of the year.

To put that figure in perspective, it’s more bench minors than 14 other NHL clubs — Calgary, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Florida, NY Islanders, Ottawa, Dallas, Anaheim, Carolina, St. Louis, Buffalo, Toronto, Colorado and Pittsburgh — have combined.

For another perspective, here’s Rangers head coach John Tortorella.

“Another too-many-men, huh?” he said following Tuesday’s 4-3 shootout win over Boston. “No, I don’t want to expand on it. It stinks, what do you want me to say.

“It’s stupid. It sucks. It’s brutal. I can use a lot of different things.”

All six of New York’s bench minors this season have been of the too-many-men variety, which is a very odd development given the discipline the team has shown in years past.

Last season, the Rangers only had seven bench minors through 82 games, 10th-fewest in the NHL.

To be clear, Tortorella wasn’t putting all the blame on his troops for the lousy changes.

Reports claim Torts was yelling at Anton Stralman following the whistle for too many during the Boston game, but suggested he wasn’t pleased with the linesman for making the call and not giving leeway to the Rangers on a dump-in.

In the future, we suggest Tortorella take the Marc Crawford approach to dealing with this situation:

Once the players hear that, they’ll never make a bad change again.