Honestly, just a thought: Donald Brashear is a Ranger. Blair Betts is about to become a Flyer. Whose side are these Garden fans on, anyway?

I know old grudges die hard, and people here respected Bettsie, but in this case they die, then come to life, then die again, and so on. Donald Brashear was booed again tonight, until he wasn’t, again. All it took was for him to get loose and throw a few in his second fight with Brandon Sugden, and the place gave him a standing ovation. I admit it, I’m confused, though I still think none of this will last.

Still, John Tortorella seems to have had enough of it, because he spoke after tonight’s 3-2 win over the Capitals about how Brashear was being “disrespected” by fans who were egged on in the summer by the media.

“I don’t know what’s going on there,” the coach said. “Donald Brashear’s gonna be a big part of the hockey club. I just don’t think he needs to be disrespected. I think you (media) guys disrespected him when we brought him in here, I think that started the ball rolling.”

Said Brashear: “I don’t play into that. If the fans are mad at me, they’re mad at me. There was an incident; maybe it’s because of Blair Betts, maybe it’s not, I don’t know, I don’t really read into it. I’ve played in this league a long time, I know what I can do, I know I can help the team. I’m just gonna try to show it, and they can appreciate it or not. But I know I’ll find a way to win their hearts.”

More to the point tonight is the fact that Marian Gaborik showed just what he is capable of, scoring twice in the game and looking like the kind of player the Rangers haven’t had here since Jaromir Jagr took his final bows in that Pittsburgh series (yeah, I know, it’s preseason, but still). The great scorers just seem to put themselves in position to score, which Gaborik did on a fluky play that led to his breakaway 36 seconds into the second - the back of the net moved before Jose Theodore did - and on his rebound goal into an open side at 12:37 of the second. “It’s funny how it works with those guys, the puck follows them around,” was how Tortorella put it.

As for the winning goal, talk about taking a hit to make a play. Brandon Dubinsky did fine for his first preseason game after his eight-day holdout, but on the winning goal, he carried it right through Matt Bradley at the right wall and then cut to the net, where Milan Jurcina absolutely drilled him, stood him right up. Still, Dubinsky got the puck to the front of the net, where a crashing Christopher Higgins tapped it right in. (Higgins, very quietly, is having an impressive camp - he’s been always around the net.)

Artem Anisimov hit some bumps really for the first time in the preseason. He couldn’t clear a bouncing puck (after Matt Gilroy knocked it off Alex Ovechkin’s stick in a 1-on-1 situation), leading to Alexander Semin’s goal, and then he failed to get a puck deep later in the period, springing the 3-on-1 that ended in Ovechkin setting up Keith Aucoin to make it 2-2. Anisimov finished minus-2.

It’s been that kind of camp: Matt Gilroy is winning awards, Bobby Sanguinetti is not quite there yet.

John Tortorella addressed the Rangers’ demotion of their former first-round draft pick before the preseason match with the Capitals that is going on at this moment, and the thrust of the coach’s opinions about the 20-year-old from Trenton was that “everything about his game needs to be quicker. And I think that’ll happen. He’s still a young kid.”

Asked for the team’s thinking behind the demotion, Tortorella began: “We want to get down in numbers. He’s had a really good camp. He to me is a guy that needs to keep playing, and I think the difference of him going down versus some of the other young kids going down is just the speed of the game, the speed of decision-making, the speed of moving the puck. I just think he’s a step behind there, so he needs to go play.

“He’ll improve, sure. It’s a great league down there. Will he be back? I don’t have a crystal ball. That’s part of a player’s responsibility, is to make sure when we call down there for someone, Kenny Gernander says ‘This guy is the guy you need to bring up.’ That’s part of his responsibility.

“He had a great attitude. He’s improved each day along here. He’s still got some work to do before he becomes a National Hockey Leaguer. He simply has more work to do.”

Gilroy, meanwhile, is the winner of the Lars-Erik Sjoberg Award as the most outstanding rookie in camp as voted by the media. Word is the margin was considerable but not a complete runaway; Artem Anisimov had some backers, too. My vote went to Gilroy, who at 25 years old is the Hideki Matsui of the Lars-Erik Sjoberg Award.

Some background on the award, as provided by the team: “The award is named in tribute to Lars-Erik Sjoberg, one of the first European players to compete professionally in North America and captain of the Winnipeg Jets for six seasons. He later became a European scout for eight years with the Rangers. Sjoberg played a key role in the Rangers drafting of Swedish stars Tomas Sandstrom, Ulf Dahlen, Kjell Samuelsson, and Jan Erixon. He passed away in 1987 and the award was created to honor his memory.”

Past winners, for a stroll down memory lane - including a favorite of this blog, former Black Ace Peter Andersson:

1988 Mike Richter

1989 Troy Mallette

1990 Steven Rice

1991 Tony Amonte

1992 Peter Andersson

1993 Mattias Norstrom

1994 Mattias Norstrom

1995 Niklas Sundstrom

1996 Eric Cairns

1997 Marc Savard

1998 Manny Malhotra

1999 Kim Johnsson

2000 Filip Novak

2001 Dan Blackburn

2002 Jamie Lundmark

2003 Dominic Moore

2005 Henrik Lundqvist

2006 Brandon Dubinsky and Nigel Dawes

2007 Marc Staal

2008 Lauri Korpikoski

John Tortorella was on his way off the rink at the end of the morning skate today, but on his way he stopped to have a lengthy talk with Bobby Sanguinetti.

Turns out that was the beginning of a meeting in which the coach informed the Trenton native that he’s going back to Hartford.

The Rangers have announced Sanguinetti’s demotion, bringing the number down to 23 players in camp and further sharpening the picture of how they’ll look on the blue line come the Oct. 2 opener. There are now seven defensemen remaining, and the big question back there now is whether they believe Michael Del Zotto should jump into the NHL full-time or be returned to London of the OHL.

Del Zotto has impressed a lot of people at this camp and shown he has a bright future ahead, although my feeling is that one more year in juniors - in which his team (minus his good friend John Tavares) will lean on him plenty - wouldn’t hurt the 19-year-old. (There’s no real rush to make the call; Del Zotto can start the season with the Rangers and still be returned.) Alexei Semenov, a late addition to camp, appears a capable veteran and a big body but is not ideal, and Corey Potter, Michael Sauer and Sanguinetti remain, as Tortorella likes to say, “right down the street” in Hartford.

Sanguinetti didn’t have quite as good a time of camp as Del Zotto and shoo-in Matt Gilroy, beyond simply struggling in the fitness testing in which nerves may have played a part. But for Torts’ take on the 20-year-old blueliner, see the blog entry below.

Here’s how the lines should look to begin tonight’s game against Washington at the Garden:

Higgins-Prospal-Gaborik
Lisin-Dubinsky-Callahan
Grachev-Drury-Kotalik
Brashear-Anisimov-Voros

Redden-Rozsival
Semenov-Gilroy
Del Zotto-Girardi

So scratch Brian Boyle and the injured Sean Avery up front, and Marc Staal on defense. Staal stayed off the ice on Tuesday because of a balky groin, which the team doesn’t want to mess with by playing him tonight; but he’ll get into Sunday’s preseason finale in D.C. (And now it’s no wonder Tortorella wouldn’t commit to dressing Sanguinetti for that one and giving the Trenton native one last pitch to make the big club.)

Anisimov, meanwhile, will play his fourth straight game as the coach continues to like what he sees from the AHL’s fifth-leading scorer last season. “He’s the kind of guy, like I said with Donald (Brashear) - not the same type of player obviously - that I can bounce him around in different spots,” Tortorella said, noting that Anisimov starting out as the fourth-line center means very little. “He’s been one of our better faceoff guys, we’re trying to teach him how to kill penalties, I think he’s done a pretty good job there. So we’ll see.”

With two tune-up games to go and Brandon Dubinsky making his preseason debut tonight, Tortorella will keep Vinny Prospal in the middle alongside Marian Gaborik at least at the start. But he insisted that he’ll take a look at Dubinsky in that role: “I think Prospal has probably been our (best) puck distributor as far as seeing the ice. I’ve played him there before, I’ve played him on wing - he’ll get responsibility in both areas. And Dubie will get some time - we’ll take a look at Dubie with Gaborik and even other wingers along the way here. … Those lines are ever-changing.”

Fare-the-wells: To Wayne Gretzky, who steps down as coach of the Coyotes after piling mess upon heaping mess by not showing up for training camp. And to Patrice Brisebois, who will announce his retirement tonight after playing more than 800 games and winning a Stanley Cup with his hometown Canadiens, and who is a class act, a dream interview and a stock-car racer, go figure.

The Rangers today are hoping they have a team full of fast studies, fast healers and fast friends.

First of all, a welcome sight today was Sean Avery walking into the dressing room in Greenburgh off crutches and without a brace on his sprained right knee. Avery did not skate today and still appears at least a few days off from doing so, but said he’s hoping, and fairly confident, that he’ll be able to be in the lineup for the Oct. 2 opener in Pittsburgh. “I’ve always been a pretty good healer, so …”

To help with that healing, Avery will receive what’s called PRP (platelet-rich plasma) treatment, a relatively new treatment in which team doctor Andrew Feldman will inject his own blood (Avery’s, not Feldman’s) into the injured area.

Avery was hurt when he and Ryan Callahan collided during a drill in Monday’s morning skate. Avery said he saw Callahan coming but couldn’t maneuver out of the way quickly enough and wound up with “a little twist in my knee.” He had an MRI yesterday and “I was a little nervous going in for the MRI, but it came back clean. So hopefully this is just getting my injury out of the way right now so it doesn’t happen during the season.”

Avery, who resurfaced on Broadway at the beginning of March after that whole to-do in Dallas, had an unexpected thought when talking about the team’s playoff fade last season, and the new group’s excitement to start over. “I mean, it was a tough situation because I think it was a long year,” he said of the 2009 homestretch. “I think it was a lot of smoke and mirrors with the team - I don’t think it was as close as a lot of people indicated.”

And this team? “The guys are all kind of excited about being together. I know a lot of teams say that, sometimes it’s not always true, but I feel like that’s the situation now.”

As for other less-injured parties in camp, Marc Staal (groin) and Wade Redden (back) were both back on the ice after taking at least part of yesterday’s sessions off. They caught up for the second day of Torts classes, in which the Rangers have begun cramming on defensive zone coverages, breakouts, neutral-zone coverages and forechecking. It’s a lot of dry-erase, classroom and videotape work and going through the paces on the ice, though the coaches will get their first true gauge of how the players are soaking it up when they enact it all against the Capitals tomorrow night.

“I think we’ve had two good days. We’ve had so many games to open up the camp, I think we’ve gotten a lot of our conditioning in, and the last two days we’ve gotten a lot of our teaching in,” Tortorella said. “This is an important time, at least for the coaches in trying to get our message across to them as far as our team concept, our foundation.”

Tortorella on Bobby Sanguinetti, and how he’s come along in his offensive game: “Not as much as a Del Zotto and a Gilroy. We know it’s in him, we tried to give him some power-play time the last game, and we’ll probably give him some more in the next game or two to give him a look.

“Right now I don’t think he’s on the same plane as the other two kids in that offensive part of it. Sometimes maturity at that position, in all facets of the game, is different for different people. But he’s certainly put himself on the map here as far as me getting to know him as a player. I didn’t know anything about him.”

FYI: The Rangers still have a limited number of tickets available for select regular-season games - newyorkrangers.com - or do it the old-fashioned way at the Garden box office.

So when you’re watching the Rangers this season and a casual fan asks you, “Do they ever actually PRACTICE this thing?”, you can knowledgably answer yes.

The Rangers went through about 40 minutes of power-play practice today, followed by an up-tempo session during which John Tortorella and assistant coach Mike Sullivan began teaching some defensive coverages and then put the players through about 15 minutes of sprints by the end. The PP work was to lay a little groundwork - “Breakout, how to retrieve a puck, and just some foundational plays,” Tortorella said, “but then the coaches need to get out of the way and let them be creative.”

From the PP to the P.A.: winger P.A. Parenteau took part in practice but has been sent to Hartford, leaving the Rangers with 24 in camp - 14 forwards, eight defense and two goaltenders. The coach of course left the door open for Parenteau - a 26-year-old who has scored 63 goals for Hartford over the past two seasons - to be brought back to New York this year, but said that it makes no sense to keep him on so he can start the season buried on the fourth line.

Three players missed all or some of the practice sessions: Sean Avery, who suffered a sprained knee in a collision with Ryan Callahan during yesterday’s morning skate, was getting around the training rink on crutches. Marc Staal sat out the entire program because of a bothersome groin; he expects to skate tomorrow and play against Washington on Thursday, but Tortorella was noncommittal and Staal added a you-never-know. “I came today to go on the ice, I was ready to skate, but Rammer said no,” Staal said, referring to trainer Jim Ramsay. “Gotta listen to the boss.” Wade Redden wasn’t around for the second portion of the practice after his back came up sore.

Brandon Dubinsky, who still has some fitness testing to go through later in the week, kept up just fine during the sprints and said afterward that he is even surprised by how good he felt. “I don’t feel like I’m a step behind, I feel like I’m right there,” he said. “Certainly I feel my conditioning can improve, but I think that could be said for 25 guys in here.”

Dubinsky - who worked on a line with Callahan and Chris Higgins for part of practice - also said that since ending his eight-day holdout on Saturday, he had a sit-down with Tortorella and that “everything’s good” with the coach who last week called his holdout “stupid.”

“He expects the same out of me as he does out of everyone else,” Dubinsky said.

What he expects is more production. Asked whether Dubinsky (27 goals in two NHL seasons) has it in him to be a more dangerous goal scorer - as Dubinsky himself said he wants to become - Torts chuckled and said: “I think that’s why they held out with that contract, didn’t they? I hope so.

“I’m serious!” he added as he and we reporters started laughing. “We’re not paying him a million-eight to check.”

The Rangers learned tonight that Sean Avery has a sprained right knee resulting from the knee-on-knee collision with Ryan Callahan at this morning’s skate. “He’ll be out for a little bit, just not sure how many days,” John Tortorella said after the 4-2 preseason victory over the Red Wings at the Garden. “Depends how quickly guys heal; some guys heal quicker.”

Ah, tell that to Marian Gaborik, who played his first game in a Rangers sweater tonight and made a superb play to set up Enver Lisin on a power play nine minutes into the game. The winger received a pass in the right-wing corner, skated it out to the point and, with Brad Stuart marking him the entire way, reversed the play back to the corner, around the net and to the left wall, where he took a peek to find Lisin and whipped a backhand pass across both circles for a one-timer. It was impressive stuff.

“I felt pretty good out there for the first game,” Gaborik said. “I felt nervous at the start but it felt pretty good. Hopefully it’s going to get better and better.”

How did John Tortorella feel about Gabby first go? “Well, he got knocked on his (rear) the first shift, didn’t he?” the coach said with a chuckle.

That he did, getting laid out by Johan Franzen not even a half-minute into the game. That may have even helped him out, though, just getting the first contact out of the way and realizing he won’t shatter. Gaborik played 19:38 and tied for the game high with five shots. (Shots, by the way, were 18-4 Rangers after one period; they ended up 30-30.)

“I mean, you can see his talent,” Tortorella said. “He did some good things in our end zone, did some lousy things in our end zone, did some good things in other areas. I just think he’s gonna add a dimension to our team I think you need in winning, and that’s his creativity and just the dynamic player that it is.”

A few notes from the game:

• Aaron Voros played physical and well in his 9:38 of ice, and even had a goal disallowed on a tough break - the whistle blew for a delayed penalty because the referee mistakenly thought a Red Wing had touched the puck. Voros roofed a shot over Detroit starter Daniel Larsson, but you won’t see it on the stat sheet.

No matter, the coach he is trying to impress into giving him a spot on the team praised him after the game. As we’ve mentioned here, Voros stayed local this summer to work out at the practice rink and work to improve his strength, balance and his game. “It’s a good problem to have - we’ve got a logjam in some areas and he’s part of that logjam,” Torts said. “I’m not sure where it’s all gonna settle, but he has certainly played to a level where he is fighting for a position on this club. … I have a lot of respect for him for how he’s handled himself and what he’s doing to try to win a spot on this club.”

• Artem Anisimov now has a three-game goal-scoring streak in the preseason, though this one was decidedly less spectacular than the ones he scored in Detroit and Boston over the weekend. Last night he scored on an empty-netter from center ice, but it was another strong game from the young centerman, who finished plus-2 in 13:11.

• Voros also had a nice little dustup with Larsson’s relief, the pugnacious former Ranger Dan Cloutier, who tried keeping Voros in a headlock at one point in the second period and wound up with a wrestling match and a holding penalty (Voros went for roughing). It was hardly a subtle move by the goaltender, though as I recall, neither subtlety nor goaltending were his strong suits during his Ranger days.

I saw MSG Network was showing this when Cloutier came in, but I’ll throw it up too because I remember it well - I sat watching this game from the last row of the Coliseum, April 4, 1998. You have to be either a serious hockey fan or dangerously unbalanced if you’re taking a train and a bus from the city to go watch those two wretched teams play from the back row.

If my memory is right, I seem to recall Wayne Gretzky being numb with shame at the scene that played out here - but then, that season was the start of so many numbingly shameful Ranger moments that I could be confusing them. Anyway, this was a Fox game, so note our pal Kenny Albert at the mike:

As you’re adding Marian Gaborik’s name to your lineup card tonight, you can scratch Sean Avery from the list, because the left winger was felled by a collision with Ryan Callahan during this morning’s skate. Avery and Callahan came together as they were trying to cross at the blue line during a drill about 30 minutes into the skate, with what looked to be a more leg-on-leg collision than knee-on-knee (let’s just use NHL parlance and say lower-body-on-lower-body). Avery went down in a heap and stayed down for a few moments, then got up skating gingerly on his right leg. He went straight to the locker room and the Rangers sent him to team doctor Tony Maddalo to get checked out.

Meanwhile, Gaborik is set for his preseason debut tonight when the Red Wings visit the Garden, finally getting himself into a tune-up game after missing the first four because of groin soreness that slowed him at the start of camp. Gaborik skated on a line this morning with Vinny Prospal as his center and Chris Higgins on the left.

He said the goal is just to “get into some game situation, get some chemistry. It’s a new system so I’ve got to get used to that as well. … I’m very excited to play, and play in the Garden. Should be fun.”

Brandon Dubinsky won’t play tonight, two days after signing his two-year deal and putting his eight-day holdout to a close. Dubinsky skated with his teammates for the first time in camp today - actually stepping into Avery’s spot on left wing during some of the line drills - and stayed on the ice for extra skating with a few of the other players who won’t play tonight. “I think he needs to get some practicing in,” John Tortorella said afterward. “It would be unfair to him to throw him into a game. I know he’d love to play, I know he’s excited about being back here, but we’ve got to get him skating with the group and at this tempo.

Here’s how the lineup should look tonight based on today, with Voros in because Avery is out:

Kotalik-Drury-Lisin
Higgins-Prospal-Gaborik
Voros-Anisimov-Callahan
Grachev-Boyle-Parenteau
Not playing: Avery, Brashear, Dubinsky

Semenov-Gilroy
Redden-Sanguinetti
Del Zotto-Girardi
Not playing: Staal, Rozsival

Lundqvist-Valiquette

More later from the Garden.

Brandon Dubinsky is back in the building, skating at the Rangers’ practice rink in Greenburgh today, doing it again tomorrow (the rest of the Rangers have the day off) before joining his teammates on Monday. Seems likely he’ll sit out Monday’s game against Detroit, but if he’s fit to go on Thursday he could get in there against Washington at the Garden. There are 12 days to go until the Oct. 2 opener in Pittsburgh.

“It’s nice that the season doesn’t start tomorrow,” Dubinsky said by telephone this evening. “It’s gonna give me a little time here, which I’m gonna need. But the bottom line is, when Oct. 2 comes around, I’m gonna be ready for it.”

The 23-year-old center said he was equally “excited” and “relieved” to have a contract in his pocket, particularly one worth $3.7 million over two years - which makes his holdout look decidedly less “stupid,” as John Tortorella labeled it. People around the Rangers understandably were steamed that a 23-year-old with two promising but unspectacular NHL seasons under his belt was missing a hugely important training camp ahead of a hugely important season for him so he could shake more money out of them, so maybe there is some damage to the relationship that I’m not foreseeing at this point. But they all know, business is business and all that.

Dubinsky, meanwhile, never one to dog it on the ice at any time, admitted that the holdout and the contract give him something extra to prove to his coaches and the organization.

“There’s definitely going to be questions - is he ready to go, because he’s missed a week now? Is he fit enough? Will he be prepared to start the season? They’re all valid questions,” Dubinsky said. “I’ve just got to prove I’m prepared.

“When push came to shove, (holding out) was a tough decision, but it was one I felt was right. I’m thankful it turned out okay and I have a deal done.”

On his teammates’ reactions: “I had the opportunity to talk to a lot of the guys, and I got a lot of messages today after I signed saying we’re glad you’re back and everything. I don’t know how it’s going to be seen by the coaching staff or from the management side of things.”

On the possibility he might play with Gaborik: “I hope so. That’s obviously been talked about a lot. He’s one of the elite players in the league and that’s gonna be a great opportunity for me if we can get together and find a way to click.”

“Anytime you make a tough decision, you have to live with the consequences. What those consequences are going to be, I don’t know,” he went on. “The things that were said from our side, and the things that were said from the management side, for me it can be water under the bridge. There’s no more need for any blame game. We have a deal done now. None of that matters anymore.

“I’m going to come in tomorrow, and on Monday, and I’m going to answer the questions about everything and that’s fine. But after that, as far as I’m concerned, I’m going to lay it to rest. I’ll concentrate on being a New York Ranger and that’s it, because that’s the most important thing to me.”

Brandon Dubinsky’s holdout has ended on Day 8 - the center has signed a two-year contract worth $3.7 million. Thus ends an enormous headache for both sides with Dubinsky getting himself a nice bump. More to follow.

The Rangers are down to 29 players in camp from the 54 they began with - and to see who’s staying, just scroll down to the previous blog entry. Meanwhile, here’s who’s headed where:

HARTFORD: G Miika Wiikman; Ds Trevor Glass, Brent Henley, Sam Klassen, Mike Sauer, David Urquhart, and Nigel Williams; and Fs Andres Ambuhl, Daniel Bartek, Devin DiDiomete, Brodie Dupont, Dan LaCouture, Matt Maccarone, Justin Soryal, and Dale Weise.

JUNIORS: G Scott Stajcer (Owen Sound, OHL); Ds Tomas Kundratek (Medicine Hat, WHL); and Fs Ryan Bourque (Quebec, QMJHL), Roman Horak (Chilliwack, WHL) and Ethan Werek (Kingston, OHL).

Okay, so technically there are 34 players still officially in Rangers camp, but forwards Tyler Arnason, Dane Byers, Corey Locke, Jordan Owens and Patrick Rissmiller have been sent to “continue training camp with Hartford” - those five guys would need to pass through waivers to go down to Hartford, so this maneuver puts that off until it’s necessary and leaves some insurance forwards still technically in camp. Locke and Byers will play in one more preseason game, likely Saturday in Boston, but it’s likely their next one will be in a Wolf Pack sweater. And then, given the Rangers’ situation at center, Arnason shouldn’t stray too far from a phone.

One move of note is that Sauer, the second-round pick in ‘05, is out right away while Ilkka Heikkinen stays and is slated for his first preseason action tomorrow in Detroit. Seems John Tortorella, knowing how he appreciates defensemen whose instincts say attack, is just waiting to see if lightning strikes with the offense-minded Heikkinen, who has quarterbacked power plays in the past and has some more attack upside than Sauer.

“Heikkinen has caught our eye a little bit to take a longer look,” Tortorella said. “Like I told Mike in the meeting, he shouldn’t take this in the wrong way. I think he has some things to improve on, but even as we go through this camp here the guys who are sent to Hartford are still under the umbrella of the New York Rangers. So there’s constant evaluation going on, especially at the defense position.

“That position’s wide open, as you can see on our roster. That position’s in a state of flux right now as far as what we’re going to do.”

Meanwhile, on Marian Gaborik, who scrimmaged today for the first time: Gaborik will make this weekend’s trip with the team but won’t play tomorrow in Detroit. The coach left open the possibility of getting him into Saturday’s game in Boston, though my guess is he’ll start at home on Monday against the Red Wings.

“With Gabby it’s a matter of him mentally feeling comfortable with it,” Tortorella said of the sore groin that has hampered Gaborik over camp. “It was good to see him scrimmage today. You can see the talent level obviously, even in a scrimmage game. It’s just like with knee injuries, a lot of it is just getting through it mentally and feeling comfortable. We have some time here. We’re trying to hopefully be smart about this and get him as geared up for that opener” Oct. 2 in Pittsburgh. Gaborik, meanwhile, said he’s “improving every day” and “just building confidence.”

Asked if he’s struggling to feel out when it’s appropriate to push Gaborik and when to lay back, Torts said: “You gotta be careful. I don’t blame him for the way he thinks about this, it’s an ongoing thing. I need to respect that about the athlete. I believe in pushing athletes but I can’t be stupid either. … I just don’t want to short-circuit a regular season with a guy that is a pretty important piece of the puzzle for us.”