Dorsett: Rangers must put Game 1 in rearview mirror

New York Rangers forward Derek Dorsett will be blogging for NHL.com throughout the Stanley Cup Final, offering his insight on what is happening inside the walls of his team's locker room and within the confines of the rink.

LOS ANGELES -- When you a lose a game like we lost tonight, the best thing to do is get back to the hotel and keep things light, hang out with the boys and try not to talk about the game.

We'll have a team dinner like we usually do after every game. We'll have a hospitality room, so some guys will play Xbox. We need to keep it light, but at the same time we will be thinking about what we could have done differently.

We had a good start tonight. We did everything we wanted to do in the first period. Even our second period was pretty good. We knew they were going to make a push, and they pushed us hard in the third. We got caught on our heels.

But we made it through the third, and then anything can happen in overtime, so the guys stayed positive in the locker room. We were ready to hit the ice for overtime.

But obviously when you get off to a 2-0 lead, you think you're going to get a better outcome than we did tonight.

This is not the start we wanted obviously. But it's the first to four wins in this series, and we've got to make sure we shake it off, look at what we did wrong, what we can do better, and go from there. It's going to be a long series. We'll bounce back.

Right now, though, I'd say we're mad. We weren't happy with how we played in the third period. We'd obviously like to push and have more pushback.

They pushed pretty hard. I think we'll regret that we didn't have the best third period, but we'll correct that and come out with a better effort in Game 2. We have to use this loss as motivation because we thought we had a good chance to win the first game after getting out to a 2-0 lead.

It's just too bad we have to wait until Saturday to play again. I'd like to get right back at it tomorrow if I could. Waiting is hard.

Like this morning, we wake up and go to breakfast, and then later lay down to try to have a nap, but you're waking up every 15 to 20 minutes looking at the clock, thinking, 'Am I late?'

You're not, but you're like, 'Can we just start this already?' Even though it was an early game here in L.A., it felt like it was a long day.