MRI = Michal Rozsival Injury

What is this, the third grade?

The Rangers announced a non-announcement yesterday on their official team website:

"New York Rangers President and General Manager Glen Sather announced today that defenseman Michal Rozsival is expected to be sidelined for seven to 10 days with a lower body injury."

Lower body injury? Rozsival hurt his left knee. What in the world is the big secret? If the rest of the NHL suddenly knew which part of his lower body was hurt (for example - maybe the part that got MRI-ed yesterday?) what exactly would other teams do with this valuable secret information?

It's like - let's say a player is wearing a face guard for a broken jaw - would any professional opposing player ever try to take advantage of the injury by grabbing the face guard and ... oh wait - Avery did exactly that over the weekend to Thomas Vanek . Never mind.

But anyway - once you've MRI-ed the left knee, teams are going to figure out what happened. And I'm not exactly sure that opposing teams want to keep Rozsival out of the lineup - if you know what I mean.

On the other hand, maybe it's just that the Ranger medical staff is very slow on the diagnosis - after 2 days all they've figured out so far is Michal's injury is somewhere below his waist. "Your eyebrows look fine, Michal, we'll keep looking."

It's almost like the Rangers are taking a page from NY Giants Coach Tom Coughlin's playbook. As Ralph Vacchiano, our favorite NY Giants writer, has often pointed out - Coughlin and the Giants are not big on disclosing the details of player injuries either - and have used that "lower body injury" phrase themselves a time or two. So I guess the Rangers are in good company...

And hey - your Blueshirt Brothers are happy that at least the Rangers managed to name the player and the body half involved. You know, so that when we see Roz limping around we can say "hey, man - how's that lower body feeling?" or even "I've been thinking about your lower body all week, Michal".

Anyway - moving on - despite the determined rooting of the Magic Rat (our mascot and mystical advisor) , Mr. Scoreboard gave us the butt end of his stick last night as the She-Devils, who can always be counted on to take a dive when their loss hurts the Rangers, gift wrapped another 2 points for Philly with a 4-2 loss. At least Shanny did his best by notching his 5th goal of the year in the losing effort.

And when the Hurricanes and Panthers played - sure enough - OT - points for everyone! Whoopie! The 'canes got the 3-2 OT win and jumped to 87 points, leapfrogging the aquatic fish for 5th place. And Florida, despite losing, was given the "thanks for playing" consolation point to creep a point closer to ousting us from the playoffs.

So when the ice storm had cleared we see, in the cold light of morning, Philly in 4th with 90 points, Carolina (!) in 5th with 87, the suddenly tumbling Penguins in 6th with 86, your Rangers in 7th with 84, and Florida and Montreal ties at the Line-O-Death with 81.

Is it just me or is it getting warmer here in the Eastern Conference? The pressure is on this evening for our heroes.