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Marc Staal says Rangers are 'itching to play competitive hockey again'

GREENBURGH, N.Y. — After two weeks of a training camp that coach David Quinn insisted was not a training camp, the Rangers had one last, brief skate at their practice facility Sunday and then it was off to Toronto, and the NHL bubble, for the league’s 2019-20 restart. After four-and-a-half months of no games because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Rangers will play a practice game Wednesday against the rival Islanders, and then, finally, they will begin their best-of-5 qualifying series Saturday against the Carolina Hurricanes.

“It's a little surreal,’’ defenseman Marc Staal said in one final, post-practice Zoom call, before the Rangers boarded a bus to take them to their charter flight to Toronto.