I think we can all agree that the Rangers making a coaching change wasn’t unexpected. As I argued last week, I wasn’t so sure that Tom Renney being let go was necessarily the appropriate move for the Rangers to make right at this moment, but I can’t go crazy over it – whether it was now or after the season, it seemed like an eventuality.

So now the question is: What’s next?

John Tortorella comes with a good reputation, a hard-nosed reputation, a reputation for being the kind of coach that holds his players to the fire. Not surprisingly, that’s the opposite of Renney. But can Tortorella deliver the opposite results?

I still don’t see how the Rangers are going to score many more goals. Renney utilized a duck-and-cover approach primarily because that is what he had to work with – a great goalie and some varied offensive players. Can Tortorella find magic where Renney didn’t?

My expectations are no different than they were yesterday. I expect the Rangers to make the playoffs. If Lundqvist gets hot, I expect them to even win a round or two. If he doesn’t, I expect them to go home.

What do you expect?

CARP SAYS:

Sorry again for the delay. I was over at Rangers practice. Here’s exactly what I expect from Tortorella. I expect them to play harder, and for them to appear to be playing harder, too, because of his aggressive system. “We don’t trap” was Tortorella’s edict today.

So I expect they will score more goals just from style. But they may also score more goals because I think he will use Scott Gomez, as a perfect example, in a way that suits Gomez’s skills. And more goals will surely come from the power play, which has to get better because it has to get better because it has to. It can’t get worse.

The question I have, though, is how many goals will the Rangers give up? I expect Henrik Lundqvist to be better when he doesn’t have the burden of having to hold his opponent to one goal, or none, in order to have a chance to win. But will the Rangers’ defense, and their attacking system, leave him all alone and expect him to bail them out the way the govermnent is bailing out everybody else?

I expect Tortorella to find out if Petr Prucha can help, if Wade Redden has anything left, if Chris Drury is a leader and a first-line player.

I still think this is a flawed team, though. I expect it will have a hard time getting into the playoffs, and I do not expect it to survive the first round. And I think, truly, this team should not make any trades of young players or draft picks in order to either sneak into the playoffs, or to win a round. The goal has to be improvement next year and in the years to come, because this team isn’t close enough to mortgage anything now.

But I do expect the Rangers will be a lot more interesting to watch, starting tomorrow. Starting today, actually.