View footage from a recent Million Dollar Shootout contest at The Garden. This is the experience of those who win a spot in the event by watching games on MSG.

It was just over a week ago that the Garden crowd was enjoying a pair of routs over Montreal and Tampa Bay in which the Rangers poured in 14 goals in their biggest offensive burst of the season. Tonight, you can tell the natives on 33rd St. are getting restless given the way the Rangers are playing these days.

So it’s no wonder the Rangers are looking upon this upcoming trip out West as something positive, a chance to escape the mess of four straight losses and, in Chris Drury’s words, all the “negative stuff coming down on this team right now, during the games, after the games, before the games.”

“It’s the best thing for us right now,” Ryan Callahan after the Rangers held a closed-door meeting that included an address from Glen Sather. “Get away from everything. You’re on the road, you’re in hotel rooms, you can concentrate on just the game.”

This is not exactly a trip you would wish on a struggling team, though, three games in four nights against some strong competition in Phoenix, Colorado and Los Angeles, but the Rangers are spinning it the only way they can. Following those two wins by a combined score of 14-4, the Rangers have lost four in a row by an aggregate 17-3.

Every player I spoke with after the game, plus the coach in his press conference, mentioned the phrase “stay together.” “We need to try to regroup as a hockey club, but you can’t be pointing a finger at your teammates, you can’t feel sorry for yourself; you gotta grind through this,” the coach said. “Having gone through all this in the Eastern Conference, we’re still right in the middle of it all.”

After four shots on goal in a dreary first period in which Tortorella felt his Rangers “were uptight for some reason,” the Rangers had 22 shots in the second - a season-high for a period - and 12 more in the third, and at least this time they made the opposing goaltender break a sweat after the likes of Jaroslav Halak, Ray Emery and Mike Brodeur shut them out on easy nights of work. But their own goaltender has to be raising a few eyebrows over the last three games, in which he has stopped 54 of 66 shots - an .818 save percentage - and was yanked once, in Saturday’s stinker in Montreal.

“Right now I think too much. I need to just play,” Lundqvist said, while also hinting that his confidence may be wavering at the moment but that by the next game, “it can come back like that.”

Wade Redden, meanwhile, didn’t see much ice time at all after that “uptight” first period. The defenseman took one shift in the second period and none in the third. Tortorella said “that was my decision” and that he didn’t care to give “a long dissertation” about it.

From the Rangers:

NEW YORK RANGERS POST-GAME NOTES
January 27, 2010 – New York Rangers 1, Carolina Hurricanes 5 (Game #54, Home #29)
·         The Rangers were defeated by the Carolina Hurricanes, 5-1, tonight at Madison Square Gar…

Patrick Dwyer and Eric Staal scored before 4 minutes elapsed, and the cellar-dwelling Carolina Hurricanes sent the New York Rangers to their fourth straight loss, 5-1 on Wednesday night.
Dwyer and Staal beat goalie Henrik Lundqvist with consecutive shots 25 seconds apart to give the Hurricanes their third win in…

Rangers never even tried to attrit Carolina

The Rangers, who have four consecutive regulation losses for the first time this season, began the night tied in points for eighth were booed off the ice thanks to a 5-1 loss to the Hurricanes. The Rangers are on a 3-6-2 skid.

There’s more to the Rangers’ paltry offensive numbers than meets the eye — they’re even worse than they seem.
The Rangers have lost three games in a row, scoring just 17 goals in their past eight games. But the numbers are inflated by an eight-goal and a six-goal…

I’ve got to run off to do an interview this a.m. I’ll be back later today, and through the game. Not sure I’ll make it to MSG, though.

Ales Kotalik is back in the lineup tonight. Not sure who is being prucha’d along with Erik …

Rangers head coach John Tortorella speaks to reporters following the Blueshirts’ 5-1 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes on Jan. 27 at The Garden.