It’s not so much what lies directly ahead, but what lies beyond it that should put a scare into the Rangers.
There is little question the sole focus for the Blueshirts will be on Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals on Thursday night at the Garden, their lead in this best-of-seven now at 3-2.
Yet in the back of their minds exists the possibility of a Game 7 played on Saturday night in the din of the Bell Centre, which flashed back to its bedeviling history in the visitors’ 7-4 throttling Tuesday at the hands of the Canadiens.
“I think in this situation, to win a game you go to the Stanley Cup final, it’s a desperate time,” de facto captain Brad Richards said on Wednesday before the team left its Montreal hotel for the flight home. “You don’t want to go back to a Game 7 where anything can happen.”
So began the parade of rhetoric, the things players are wont to say in these types of high-pressure situations, where the consequences of a loss are almost completely dismissed. Because the consequences are not something they want to think about, particularly in this scenario where the Canadiens would have won two games in a row, and would be returning to their raucous arena for a do-or-die game with the Rangers on the ropes.
“We still feel good,” Richards said. “We’ll get our matchups and have our energy with the crowd. You saw how they drew energy off their crowd [Tuesday] night. It’s an amazing opportunity that at the start of the season, we [would have] given anything to do — to win a game on home ice to go to the Stanley Cup final.”
The Rangers have had recent success in Game 7s, winning two in the opening two rounds of this postseason, the most recent on the road in Pittsburgh. And goalie Henrik Lundqvist hardly blinks while facing elimination, carrying a 10-2 record over the past three seasons, with a 1.32 goals-against average and a .957 save percentage.
But those numbers in games when they have had a chance to close a team out, not in a Game 7?
He is 0-5, with a 5.53 goals-against average and a .808 save percentage. In four of those games he was pulled midway through, including Tuesday night in Montreal, when he gave up four goals on 19 shots and lasted just 28:58 before getting replaced by Cam Talbot.
“He’ll be fine,” defenseman Marc Staal said of Lundqvist. “It’s the last concern of anyone on our team.”
Rest assured, those concerns do exist, though. The Rangers did not exactly pound the Canadiens into submission while gathering their 3-1 series lead, often riding Lundqvist to victory. Then on Tuesday he had a slip-up, and the team played defense as if it were on banana peels the whole night.
Yet if the Rangers are anything, they’re a resilient bunch, fighting back from their own 3-1 deficit against the Penguins to take that series in grand fashion. When Richards was asked a roundabout question about how a team can draw hope from the type of victory the Habs pulled off in Game 5, he rebuffed the inquisitor.
“It has nothing to do with us right now,” he said. “You’re asking how the Montreal Canadiens are going to do that. You can ask them. I’m not going to tell them how they should feel.”
No, because Richards knows how they feel, and he has thought about it enough. Saying after Tuesday’s game the Rangers’ letdown had probably given the Canadiens “a little hope,” it was clear Montreal was going to try to ride that hope to a win in the Garden, a win that would set up a decisive Game 7 back in its building.
That would not be good news for the Rangers, and no one needs to tell them that.
“We still have a great opportunity going into [Thursday] night to finish it off,” defenseman Dan Girardi said. “We have to look at it that way — win a game at home, and go to the Stanley Cup final.”