Nash Skates, but Return to Rangers Is Not Set Rick Nash, who sustained a concussion Oct. 8 against San Jose, practiced Wednesday but has yet to be cleared for contact. GREENBURGH, N.Y. - Rick Nash, symptom-free, looked great in practice Wednesday, his first with his Rangers teammates since sustaining a concussion in a game at San Jose on Oct. 8. Skating in a noncontact yellow sweater, Nash, the Rangers" top forward, flew down the ice, stickhandled through traffic and took shots on goalies Henrik Lundqvist and Cam Talbot. But encouraging as the practice was, Nash implied afterward that it might be a little while before he returned to the lineup. "I need to get some good practices in, and today was really my first one," he said, adding that he still had to see how he felt Wednesday night and Thursday to know if he would remain symptom-free after the exertion. Nash had headaches for weeks after being elbowed in the head by Sharks defenseman Brad Stuart. He traveled to Michigan to visit a concussion specialist, Dr. Jeffrey Kutcher, and received an encouraging prognosis. He followed the regimen for recovery set by Rangers doctors and the trainer Jim Ramsay. "I tried to stay away from TV because they wanted me to rest my brain," Nash said. A lot of sleep, a lot of relaxing, going for walks, things like that. On Saturday, after the headaches went away, Nash started skating by himself and doing gym workouts. There have been no setbacks, and after Wednesday's practice he reported that he "felt better than I thought I would feel." Nash, whose $7.8 million annual salary is the highest on the team, said he would need more practices to get his conditioning back. He will also need to be cleared for contact, which might take a few more days until doctors are certain he is ready. Nash is one of two Rangers not playing because of a concussion. Forward Taylor Pyatt is not practicing after he was concussed Nov. 7. But Wednesday, Rangers Coach Alain Vigneault was in an upbeat mood about Nash's prospects. "For a first practice with the team, considering that the last four or five weeks he's been on limited activity, it was a real encouraging day," Vigneault said. I'm anxious to see how he's going to respond and feel tomorrow, but I'm hoping all he's going to feel is some soreness. "THE GOALIE'S WORLD" Jacques Plante, the great goalie of the 1950s, "60s and "70s, once scoffed at the notion that goaltending was a normal job. "How would you like it if at your job, every time you made the slightest mistake a little red light went on over your head and 18,000 people stood up and screamed at you?" he said. Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist sounded a little like Plante on Wednesday, after giving up a soft second goal in a 3-2 loss to the Devils on Tuesday night. After practice, Lundqvist was asked if he minded that Coach Alain Vigneault said the goal should have been "a routine save." Lundqvist agreed with Vigneault. But it is all part of living in "the goalie's world," as Lundqvist called it. "Sometimes you can hide behind the team - you can say we, we, we," he said. But obviously being the goalie it's easier to just look at one guy's performance every night. I definitely don't have a problem with that. That's the goalie's world. That's the world I live in as a goalie. Lundqvist continued: "If you do 20 good things and one bad thing, you only talk about the bad thing. At the same time I can have games where I make a mistake and we still win the game, and people think I played really well. That's my world. You just have to accept it.