Rangers forget Tort's teachings against Thrashers

The Rangers can afford to have a few breakdowns. A letdown, though, is another thing. They can't afford those, and they certainly had a big letdown Wednesday night in the Garden.

"We're not good enough to have letdowns like that," John Tortorella said. "We're not a good enough team for that."

If the Rangers were a division-leading NFL team, Wednesday night's visit from the Thrashers would have been called a "trap game." Coming off three straight, hard-working wins, the last of which came at home against the hated Devils, the Rangers might have naturally sagged a bit with the ho-hum Thrashers coming to town.

Throw in a greater-than-usual smattering of empty seats and ice so bad you wouldn't trust it to hold together for a decent slurpee, and you have a game in which the Rangers needed to keep doing what they'd been doing. Work hard, hit people, drive the net, cycle the puck down low, get a few timely saves, all that stuff Tortorella has been driving into his players for the last two seasons.

They did it right off the bat and it produced a goal 38 seconds in. They kept doing it for another six or seven minutes, and it produced a 7-1 shot advantage.

Then, the letdown came. And the breakdowns, many of them, followed. Too many to overcome. After the Thrashers took a 2-1 lead in the second period - Evander Kane danced through five Rangers who looked an awful lot like blue pylons before snapping off a great shot - Tortorella called a timeout and got fiery with his team for one of the first times this season.

"Take the body!" was one of Tortorella's loud messages during the timeout.

"He wasn't ripping us. He's making sure we know what we have to do, to get back to what made us successful this past week," Brian Boyle said.

After all this time of Tortorella's coaching reign, it's a little disturbing that the Rangers need reminding. When they worked hard on their forecheck, there were results: Ryan Callahan's goal in that opening minute, Sean Avery's bank shot after what seemed like a full minute of cycling below the Thrashers goal line to tie the game in the second and the pair of goals 2:11 apart to pull the Rangers within a goal at 5-4 in the third.

Work hard, you get results. It was easy to see, but apparently not that easy to do in the slushy mess.

There were more problems than just a light forecheck and Rangers turning away from hits. Martin Biron got the start in goal and he gave up a pair of top-shelf scores on shots he could have stopped.

And there could be more injury problems, with Artem Anisimov's sore ankle needing a MRI exam Thursday. Tortorella used nine forwards for the attempted comeback, choosing to sit an ineffective Derek Stepan, whose game has regressed since his opening-night hat trick.

But still, with all those breakdowns and issues, this was a winnable game against a fragile opponent with plenty of its own issues. No team in the Eastern Conference is unbeatable, so playing hard and consistently through 60 minutes can get results like the Rangers got in beating the Leafs, Bruins and Devils.

Like they got in short bursts Wednesday night.

"We know how we have to play. I really believe that," Tortorella said. "These are the games we need to learn how to take the next step and we didn't do that. This isn't a division rival, it's a Southeast Division team coming in... We lost and we deserved to lose."

Even knowing what it takes to win.