Rangers coach John Tortorella says his main focus for Friday's game is to capture team's third straight win over Tampa Bay Lightning.

It was a popular marketing phrase just a little while ago as the National Hockey League sought to maximize its many assets in a series of commercials asking whether or not "this could be the year" when certain players and teams excelled, certain records might fall and certain rivalries, especially among the Original Six, 12, 18, 21 etc.

John Tortorella was supposed to change everything for the Rangers. Where previous coach Tom Renney coached with a conservative, defensive posture, Tortorella is all about risk and offense.

Oh right. The Rangers already did that last year. But then why is it almost impossible to tell the difference between the team that got defense-minded Tom Renney fired in February and the one now coached by offense-inclined John Tortorella that has scored two goals or fewer in eight of the last 10 games while going 3-7 in the process? The ...

Jed Ortmeyer of the San Jose Sharks never dreamed he would make it to the National Hockey League.

It may not be acknowledged, and the coach may not admit it, but the Rangers have played a different style of hockey since Chris Drury and Brandon Dubinsky went down with injuries on Nov.

NEW YORK - The first quarter of the Rangers' season hasn't gone as well as the first quarter of the season went for the Giants and Jets.

Edmonton's Ethan Moreau, left, scored the team's only goal in the 3-1 loss to the New York Islanders on Monday.

The Rangers are among the handful of NHL teams watching Peter Forsberg very closely when the 36-year-old free-agent center tests his chronically injured right foot in the Karjala Cup tournament that opens today in Sweden and will conclude over the weekend in Finland, The Post has learned.

That could become an issue here, where Oilers associate coach Tom Renney said yesterday that trainers believe that six of his dozen players who were sick recently had contracted the swine flu virus.

Tom Renney would have liked to chat with a number of his former players after either the Rangers' practice on Wednesday or yesterday's morning skate, but the one-time Blueshirts' coach, who was dismissed last winter following a four-season run in which he played a primary role in restoring pride in and credibility to the program, didn't think it ...

Edmonton Oilers center Gilbert Brule , left, checks New York Rangers defenseman Matt Gilroy into the boards during the first period.

Ales Kotalik had a goal and two assists, and the New York Rangers halted a four-game, road-losing streak with a 4-2 win over the Edmonton Oilers on Thursday night.

Dane Byers earns a $10,000 fine for his role in the New York Rangers-Vancouver Canucks brawl.

UNIONDALE, N.Y. a ' His current team faced the Islanders on Monday night but Oilers associate coach Tom Renney had no trouble thinking ahead to Thursdaya TMs game against his former squad.

Any Ranger who would use Marian Gaborik's absence the last two games as a crutch to explain the team's inferior performances in road defeats to the Islanders and Minnesota doesn't have a leg to stand on.

Ten games into the season including last night's match at the Garden against the Rangers, and not one time has the Coyotes' Petr Prucha been a healthy scratch.

Tom Renney still gets a kick out of coming here, even though he had an abbreviated stay as the Vancouver Canucks head coach 13 years ago when Pat Quinn hired him.

Hot on the heels of the report the New York Rangers offered Chris Chelios a spot on their AHL team , right around the time they offered Mathieu Dandenault an AHL tryout , there's only one logical conclusion to be drawn: the Rangers are trying to rebuild the Cup-winning 2001-02 Red Wings.

Mark Messier is in his first year in the Rangers front office, and by his view , he can't figure why the preseason prognosticators were so down on the Blueshirts.