WASHINGTON — It was in the first overtime last night, when Ryan McDonagh only had played around 30 minutes. The Rangers defenseman skated around the corner of his net with his head down, and there he was met by Matt Hendriks, who with a stern shoulder-to-shoulder hit sent McDonagh flailing to the ice.
“Mac gets run over and it took him a couple shifts to get his bearings,” coach John Tortorella said after his Rangers beat the Capitals 2-1 in triple overtime of Game 3 in their Eastern Conference semifinal playoff series at Verizon Center.
By getting his bearings, Tortorella meant sending McDonagh out again and again and again over the next two periods, giving him a total of 53:21 in the game, making it the fourth highest ice-time total in the playoffs since the 2005-06 season, the first season after the lockout.
“It’s not really exhaustion when you win a game,” McDonagh said. “You feel like all that effort paid off, and that’s the only way to put it.”
By the sheer will of McDonagh and his selfless backliners, the Rangers now have a 2-1 series lead as the look forward to Game 4 on Saturday afternoon.
“[McDonagh] has a mental toughness about him that has impressed us right away when he first came to us,” Tortorella said. “We kept asking him, ‘Are you OK?’ and he said he was fine, more and more.”
A lot of the credit was deferred back to the regimen that Tortorella instilled in training camp, running the whole team through rigorous condition drills and riding them relentlessly. There was a purpose being the coach’s masochist ways, and it showed itself on the smiles in the Rangers’ locker room, no matter how obscured they were with stitches and dried blood.
When asked how he got through all his minutes, McDonagh said with pride, “Knowing that the guy next to me is doing the same way.
“Everyone out there was battling.”
Strangely enough, McDonagh said he did not receive and IV drip after the game, while a handful of his teammates could be seen walking around with wraps around their arms. Along with his ridiculous minutes, McDonagh also finished with a game-high eight blocked shots, a testament to the sacrifice that never subsided as the game eked its way into the wee hours of this morning.
“I had no clue,” McDonagh said when asked about his playing time. “You just try and get out there and keep it simple and play hard and get to bench and get your breath as fast you can. Everybody put forth a hell of an effort and it’s just a good character win in a tough playoff series.”
Oh yeah, and McDonagh and blue-line partner Dan Girardi shut down the two-time league MVP Alex Ovechkin, who was kept off the score sheet by sending numerous pucks into or around the Rangers’ sprawling bodies.
“It feels great winning that game,” McDonagh said. “It’s the best feeling ever.”