Ranting and raving won’t do any good anymore. The Rangers have been beaten down enough. What they need now is to be built up. If the biggest thing is sticking together, that means the biggest danger is splitting apart.

It might be premature to say that the Rangers have tuned out Tortorella. They finished first in the East and went to the conference final under him last season. They have played only 27 games since, and they are struggling for many reasons. Some have been out of Tortorella’s control.

But it is not a stretch to say that Tortorella’s abrasive approach is easier to take when things are going well, that benching guys and (bleeping) about them publicly can grow old, and that the Rangers are in a fragile state of mind at a delicate point.

-Nicholas J. Cotsonika on the New York Rangers. Read more on the NYR at Yahoo.