Tortorella pushes Rangers in practice

GREENBURGH, N.Y. -- The Rangers may have worked harder on the practice ice Monday than they did in Saturday night's 4-0 loss to the Canadiens in Montreal.

Coach John Tortorella, who was not pleased with the effort or results Saturday night, had the players do center-ice push-ups Monday as he (not too politely) reminded them that they had "17 shots and no rebounds" in their first loss in eight games.

You might think Tortorella would have given the team a pass for throwing in a stinker after seven straight wins. You would be wrong.

"We were late in everything we did," he said. "It was one of those games. We're by it already . . . We were never involved in any battles because we didn't get there for the battle. We were in-between, all over the place. It was one of those games."

Shooting pucks on net and getting rebounds were the themes of Monday's session. The Rangers will practice again Tuesday before facing the Panthers Wednesday night in Sunrise, Fla.

"There were a couple of points we were trying to work on today," Tortorella said. "Putting the puck on net was one of them. Not just the last game, but it's been in our game for a little bit, not getting enough rebound chances because we're missing the net a lot, especially on our power play, and you don't get a chance to get any rebounds. We're just trying to generate some offense."

The Rangers went into Monday night's games ranked 27th in the league on the power play at 12.9 percent (9-for-70).

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"We're getting chances," Ryan Callahan said. "We've got to shoot the puck and hit the net more."

Callahan said the Rangers didn't even look at video from Saturday night's game. They didn't have to. They knew what went wrong.

"To be honest with you, we didn't go over the tape," he said. "It was one of those games where we just kind of put the tape away and you move on and move ahead. We realize our effort needs to be better, our execution needs to be there. In this room, we realize what we have to do. It's not a matter of looking at tape and figuring it out. It's just a matter of going out there and doing it."

Notes & quotes:Brad Richards (maintenance day) and Brandon Dubinsky (flu) did not practice . . . Tortorella tweaked the third and fourth lines, going with Ruslan Fedotenko-Erik Christensen-Brandon Prust and Sean Avery-Brian Boyle-Andre Deveaux.