OTTAWA — Maybe Olli Jokinen will carry the Rangers to the playoffs the way he carried Finland to the bronze in Vancouver. Maybe Marian Gaborik shouldn’t have tried to drag Slovakia to the first Olympic team-sport medal in its country’s history by playing on one leg.
Maybe Henrik Lundqvist would be psychologically better prepared for the stretch run had he found the way to defend the gold medal he won with Sweden in 2006 instead of getting the few extra days of rest he received after going down in the quarterfinals.
Maybe Chris Drury and Ryan Callahan will be buoyed by the silver medal that Team USA captured or maybe they will endure a hangover after coming so, so close to gold only to fall short in sudden death.
The fact is, we don’t know what the impact of the Olympics will be on the Rangers in their 20-game stretch run to the playoffs that begins tonight with a match against the Senators. Neither does anyone else, and it would be foolish to try.
It’s been impossible to detect a correlation between Olympic participation and post-tournament regular-season success since the NHL started sending its athletes to the Winter Games in 1998. Steve Yzerman and Brendan Shanahan, for example, veterans who might have been judged to benefit from extra rest in 2002, won the Cup for Detroit a few months after winning the gold for Canada, so obviously the burden was not unmanageable.
And no (or yes), Lundqvist did not play as well for the Rangers after returning from Turin as Sweden’s golden Goaltender, but the-then NHL rookie sustained an unrelated hip injury down the stretch while also suffering from unrelated migraine headaches.
You want your athletes to have success every time they compete. You want your players to take the ice with a frozen reservoir of positive reinforcement under their skates on every shift. Confidence is contagious.
Again. There is no way of knowing, no way of forecasting. But if there is anything the Rangers can take from the Olympics to turn into an asset the rest of the way, it’s Drury and the way he contributed for Team USA.
Perhaps USA assistant and Rangers head coach John Tortorella was paying attention when Team USA head coach Ron Wilson gave Drury a role and stuck with it. Perhaps Tortorella was paying attention when Wilson rolled three and four lines instead of trying to win the tournament by relying on six forwards.
Drury played his best hockey of the year in Vancouver. He looked, if one will pardon the expression, like Chris Drury; hunting the puck on the forecheck, creating chances, sniffing for and converting loose change around the net.
When we last left the Rangers, Drury was bouncing from one line to another, one position to another, sometimes on the fourth line, sometimes on the first or second. The fourth line isn’t going to cut it the rest of the way for the rejuvenated Big Moment Kid (if that title’s not reserved for Sidney Crosby).
Tortorella needs to construct three units that he believes in and will use. The Rangers aren’t going to make it from here to there if the coach insists on doubling down on his first two lines the way he has all season.
And they’re not going to make it without production from Drury, whose success in the Olympics may not presage success down the stretch, but sure presents a more encouraging platform than the alternative.