The Rangers had their game with the backup, and that might be it.
After taking it to Flyers’ reserve veteran netminder Ray Emery in a 4-1 win on Thursday night at the Garden, the Blueshirts will head into Sunday afternoon’s Game 2 with a 1-0 lead in the first-round playoff series.
But Philadelphia starter Steve Mason, who missed this contest with what is believed to be a concussion, is set to join the club on Friday and is not being ruled out as an option going forward.
“He is doing better again today,” Flyers coach Craig Berube said Thursday morning about Mason. “He’ll be joining the hockey team [Friday].”
For most of Game 1, Emery was doing what was necessary to keep his team in it, but after going into the third period tied 1-1, things opened up. The Rangers scored two power-play goals in a matter of 47 seconds, and then added the cherry on top when Carl Hagelin batted in a rebound with 4:08 to go, one of the many second-chance attempts Emery surrendered throughout the night.
“They moved it pretty well [on the power play], hit some seams there and got a couple,” Emery said. “I would like to make some saves. You know they really got momentum off those.”
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Henrik Lundqvist faced an astonishingly low total of 15 shots, with just one coming in the third period.
“It was a different game, that’s for sure,” Lundqvist said. “You have to stay ready, you try to stay ready. They had a couple chances in the first and second and then in the third we played a really controlled game and did a lot of good things out there.”
The Flyers did have a terrific scoring chance with 8:42 remaining in the second period and the game tied, 1-1, when Sean Couturier and Matt Read came down on a 2-on-1. Yet Read’s one-timer was met by Lundqvist’s stacked pads, and the Garden erupted in its only full-throated “Hen-rik” chant of the night.
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Rangers rookie forward Jesper Fast created a bit of a scare by not participating in the morning skate, but he still played and got his first taste of playoff hockey, notching an assist in 11:32 of ice time.
Rangers coach Alain Vigneault called Fast’s absence a “maintenance morning.”
Dan Carcillo and J.T. Miller were the healthy scratches up front, while Raphael Diaz joined Justin Falk as the scratches on the backend.