Dorsett: Rangers eager to get right back on the ice

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 -- We did what we had to do last night. We got the win. And now we have to stick with the same mentality.

It's all cliché, I know, but our backs really are up against the wall and we really do have to take it one game at a time. We have to have the same mentality we had going into Game 4. We have to make sure we're focused, prepared and rested so we can make sure we keep our season going.

I don't think we played our best game of the series in Game 4. None of us do. But sometimes that's the way it works in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Hank [goaltender Henrik Lundqvist] stood on his head for us. He was great. Now we have to forget what happened and come with our best game tomorrow.

When you think about it, that's all we can do. We have to take charge. We have to be at our best. We can be.

You can tell how the mood of the team has changed too. Guys are happier, certainly happier than we were after losing Game 3. But at the same time, we're focused.

You don't see guys horsing around and joking around on our team right now. We're trying to keep things light, but we're focused on what we have ahead of us. That's just one game. That's all we can prepare for and put all our energy toward.

To get to this game, though, we obviously had a long flight. It was well worth it. I told you I had a duffle bag ready to go. I'm glad I got to take it somewhere.

The flight was actually really good. I got about 2 1/2 hours of sleep on the plane after eating some breakfast. I'm on to "Boardwalk Empire" now, so after I woke up I watched a couple of episodes of that to kill the rest of the time.

Once we got here, we came right down to Staples Center and had a good practice. You have to remember that Game 5 is a 5 p.m. local start time (8 p.m. ET; NBC, CBC, RDS), so we're not going to skate in the morning or go through our normal gameday routine. Even taking a nap before a 5 o'clock game is hard to do. You're thrown off a bit.

That's why it was important to get in a practice today; to try to get the jet lag out, get your body moving and get a sweat. At this time of the year you don't want to take a full day off and do nothing. A long travel day can make your body stiff, so we had a chance today to get our bodies warm, get moving around and all those kinks out.

I'm sure tomorrow we'll have some meetings in the morning to go over what we can do better, but there will be a lot of downtime waiting to come to the rink, waiting for the game to start. However, this being at 5 o'clock game can be a good thing. We want to get back on the ice right away after getting a win, and at least this allows us to do it three hours before we normally would if we were at home.