For the New York Rangers tonight
was a dangerous game when you combine the high of beating Vancouver on Thursday
with the awful history they have had of late in Montreal and you just knew
something was bound to happen tonight.
Reality is the Rangers had no
business even being in the game after forty minutes, but it was the stellar
work and the fight in Henrik Lundqvist that had them with even a chance to just
come up short in this one. After stoning
the Canadiens four times one power play Henrik Lundqvist gone run into by Max
Pacioretty and after all the time he had been run coupled with the frustration
of the game, Lundqvist snapped. Henrik
went all Ron Hextall on Pacioretty jumping on top of him and smashing him in
the face with his blocker (video).
The team finally showed some
life after that went on with 2:20 remaining in the second and played an excellent
last 20 minutes, but it was too little too late in the grand scheme. A goal by Mats Zuccarello made it 3-2 and
they had chances late to tie, but could not get all the way back.
Now for what went wrong before
that point. After playing a decent first
12 minutes that saw the Rangers get the only goal of the game to that point the
wheels would fall off thanks to awful penalties. The Rangers scored 6:58 into the game when a
hardworking shift by Fedotenko, Boyle and Prust ended with Brian Boyle jamming
the puck through Carey Price to make it 1-0.
The point where the game fell
apart for the Rangers was 12:10 into the first when Brandon Dubinsky let P.K.
Subban get too far into his head and took an awful penalty after the whistle. On the ensuing power play Roman Hamrlik would
drive one from the point off Dan Girardi and in at 13:19.
Following that Michael Sauer
took a bad penalty on Scott Gomez at 14:02 which would see the Canadiens
capitalize again this time from Tomas Plekanec at the side of the net off a
feed from James Wisniewski to make it 2-1 Habs 14:50 into the first.
The final goal in the trio came
at 16:03 when Andrei Kostitsyn following a faceoff win by the Rangers but a
turnover where Kostitsyn ended up wide open in the slot for a slapper and in
2:44 it went from 1-0 Rangers to 3-1 Montreal.
- The only guys who showed up for the entire game were Boyle, Prust, Fedotenko, Newbury, Avery, Lundqvist
- Dubinsky was awful tonight and selfish to boot
- Gaborik excuses must end now
- Wolski was invisible as well
- On bright side as bad as they were for half the game they were inches away from tying it up
