Rangers get a bit of revenge on Red Wings

If there is such as thing as revenge in the NHL preseason, the Rangers had a taste last night.

On Sunday, the Blueshirts looked overmatched, especially in the defensive zone, in a loss to the Red Wings, but at home last night - albeit against a team without four stars - they rebounded with a 5-1 victory that raised their preseason record to 3-1.

The game also served as a showcase for some players who are trying to avoid being among the last four cuts as coach John Tortorella moved to trim the roster to 23 players.

Among those players who helped their cause: tryout Ruslan Fedotenko, who had two assists on a line with Sean Avery and Derek Stepan, each of whom scored on goaltender Jimmy Howard.

"He flies under the radar," said Tortorella of Fedotenko, who was a clutch player for Tortorella in winning the Stanley Cup in Tampa. "He made some really subtle plays." One of them was a soccer-style assist by raising one skate and directing the puck to Stepan for a shot. "My stick was tied up," said Fedotenko. "You don't practice it, but for as long as you've been playing hockey you kind of get to know the geometry of it."

Stepan is making it tough for the front office to send him to Hartford. "Each night you go to bed, you're doing numbers in your head, you're doing lines in your head, the best thing to do is not think," said Stepan, who assisted on Marian Gaborik's goal that opened the scoring at the one-minute mark.

Michael Sauer, one of nine defensemen on a club that will likely carry seven, scored on a four-on-four at the end of the first period and played 19:49. "I didn't feel out of position tonight, thought I played a sound game," he said.

One of his chief competitors, rookie Pavel Valentenko, who discovered after the game that his nose was broken by a stick on the first shift, registered an assist in 15:41 and was a plus-2. He said he felt more prepared after facing the Wings on Sunday, "and this time we got them."

Henrik Lundqvist (35 saves) was a deflection away from a shutout. "Great team game," said Lundqvist.