CAPITALS to the right of Henrik Lundqvist, Capitals to his left, Capitals dead on. And he eyed them all.
Michal Rozsival was in the penalty box for a borderline second-period hold of Thomas Fleischmann. A high-powered No. 2 seed’s season’s was swirling down the drain so fast that its only solution was to tear out the whole kitchen sink and throw it at the Rangers’ goalie.
And he stopped everything, Mike Green off a redirection through a screen. Alexander Ovechkin twice and Brooks Laich twice as wave after wave of Washington desperation came to die on the beach the Rangers goalie fearlessly held.
A Paul Mara twice-deflected shot off a Brandon Dubinsky faceoff win and a Simeon Varlamov drop of a soft-and-slippery-as-butter attempt by a one-armed Chris Drury was all the Rangers, who had been shutout for five periods going to Game 4 last night, were going to get. And in his heart of oversized hearts, their goalie knew he had to make it hold up.
“It’s fun when your team is battling so hard,” he said with a smile. “That’s why they pay me the big bucks.
“It’s a little scary because they have so many guys who can score, but when you’re confident, you’re a little more relaxed and let the puck come to you.
“There were a few I didn’t see. Two went off the post, I think. But a couple times there in the second [period] I just waited for that last split second and was able to find it. Sometimes you fight it and open up and it creates holes.”
The Caps weren’t looking any longer for holes what hadn’t been there the entire series. Quality hadn’t worked, so they went to quantity.
Tick, tick, tick went the Alexander Ovechkin bomb. And on his second shift of the second period, inevitably it went off. He flew down the left wing and used Derek Morris’ legs for a millisecond advantage, even the leading scorer in the NHL needs against one of the very best at the top of his game.
“A rocket,” Lundqvist said. “I don’t know if I was screened, I just know nobody shoots it like him.”
Ovechkin’s first goal of the series, off the tip of Lundqvist’s glove, set up 17 minutes even longer than the shadow cast by the scariest player in hockey.
“As hard and as fast as they were coming, now they were going to come even harder,” Lundqvist said.
The Rangers penalty box door closed on Sean Avery twice for gratuitous penalties. And two more doors opened for Washington. On the first the Caps held the puck in almost two minutes. Lundqvist gloved an Ovechkin screamer labeled for the far corner.
“I looked up when there was 10 minutes,” he said. “I knew there would be three, four five more scoring chances.
“Everything gets heavy. You try to regroup, keep telling yourself you are not tired, tell yourself you have so much energy that you have to stay tall. Everything happened so fast after that, there’s no time to look at the clock.”
With 30 seconds left and Varlamov on the bench, Laich thought there was room over Lundqvist’s blocker, but there wasn’t. Ovechkin spun and fired his 11th s shot and Washington’s 39th, but Lundqvist dropped down to stop it.
“He did an unbelievable job,” said Ovechkin after the clock finally ran out to a roar from fans soooo relieved to see it over, at the same time feeling cheated that maybe the most riveting playoff action they had seen since 1994 was over — but only until tomorrow night, when Lundqvist has to do it again.