Henrik Lundqvist (Getty Images)
OH, GREAT! Alex Ovechkin celebrates after scoring the game-winning goal past Henrik Lundqvist during the Rangers’ 3-2 loss to the Capitals in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference semifinals last night. (Neil Miller)
This wasn’t a matter of the more desperate team winning the game, or of the Rangers not being hungry enough at Madison Square Garden last night, no, not that at all.
But the Rangers weren’t quite disciplined enough despite coming hard most of this Game 2, despite owning the puck and dictating the tempo much of the way.
As such, the Rangers have bought themselves trouble in this NHL Eastern Conference semifinal with Alexander Ovechkin’s power play drive through a screen at 12:33 of the third lifting the Capitals to a 3-2 victory and a 1-1 deadlock in the best-of-seven that swings down to the nation’s capital for the next two, Game 3 tomorrow night.
And the trouble was bought via a pair of consecutive penalties 2:36 apart midway through the third period of a tie game, the club surviving the initial Brian Boyle offensive zone holding the stick infraction but not the Brad Richards’ hold on John Carlson just inside the Rangers’ line at 12:29.
“You can’t take that penalty,” Richards said, calling himself out after being cited for a marginal infraction after the Rangers had clearly gotten the benefit of previous inept officiating by the Stephen Walkom-Eric Furlatt tandem.
“We had just killed a big one, so you can’t take another.”
Ovechkin played 4:22 in the third period and 13:36 overall but he needed a mere split second to blast a dive from the top after Nicklas Backstrom won the left circle draw cleanly from Boyle, who rejoined the lineup after missing the final two of the Ottawa series and Saturday’s Game 1 of this round after by being concussed in Game 5 against the Senators.
“I saw it when he shot it, then I kind of lost it and then I picked it up again,” said Henrik Lundqvist. “You don’t see a shot like that all the way.”
After scoring, Ovechkin, who’d been heckled by the crowd in a countdown chant with his name substituted for Denis Potvin’s, lifted his glove to his left ear as he circled in triumph while Richards trudged back to the bench with an unhappy coach behind it.
“When you battle back hard to tie the game the way we did, you can’t take four minutes in penalties,” said that coach, John Tortorella, whose team had tied the game on Ryan Callahan’s power play deflection at 6:58 of the third.
“You can’t win hockey games like that.”
The Rangers didn’t, even though they might have, even though they did forecheck with zeal facing what almost resembled a mirror image of themselves in the Capitals, who blocked 24 shots while being out-attempted 65-46, 25-13 in the third.
“I don’t think that right after you lose a game like this you take too much positive away because of a good effort,” said Richards, who scored at 19:17 of the first after the Rangers had fallen behind 2-0, and who had three of his team’s four shots on Braden Holtby over the final 13:02 after tying the score, two in the final half-minute.
“It’s about winning at this stage.”
Tortorella flipped Marian Gaborik (scoreless in his last eight) and Chris Kreider on a handful of shifts in the third but would not explain why (Heaven forbid!), and Michael Del Zotto rang one off iron in the final minute, but still, the Rangers could not avoid their third loss in six playoff games on Broadway.
They survived the first-round after dropping Game 2 and going to Ottawa at 1-1, but Lundqvist — who yielded the second goal to Jason Chimera following a kerfuffle behind the net when the a chip-in the goaltender had meandered out to play stopped just short of the trapezoid — was not looking back.
“I’m not thinking about that series at all now,” said Lundqvist. “I’m just focusing on this series and the next game, that’s all.
“We knew this was not going to be easy.”
And now, the Rangers have been proven correct.