MONTREAL — The sound of the fury was the Rangers berating themselves for throwing 40 minutes away before storming the Bastille represented by Carey Price’s net.
The Blueshirts spent two periods barely hanging in last night against the Canadiens, outshot 29-12 but down only 3-1 due to Henrik Lundqvist’s brilliance between the pipes, all three Montreal scores coming within a late first period span of 2:44, two coming on the power play 44 seconds apart.
“You try to start over every time, but of course I’m aware of my history in this building,” said The King, who entered the match with a 5.17 GAA and .841 save percentage over his last seven starts here. “After the first period I told myself that it was not going to happen again.
“I challenged myself to give the team the chance to win.”
Lundqvist, who became embroiled in a second period scuffle with Max Pacioretty in which the goaltender pounded the forward with his blocker hand after he was run, most certainly did that.
And after coach John Tortorella switched all his forward combinations and rolled four lines throughout the third, the Blueshirts fired 21 shots on Price after creating one flurry after another, but could not come away back, falling 3-2, unable to get the equalizer after Mats Zuccarello got one from the goalmouth at 6:57.
What took the coach so long?
What took the Rangers so long?
“Hank was unbelievable. He deserved better from us,” said Brian Boyle, who had given his team an early 1-0 lead. “We took way too many penalties early and gave them momentum we couldn’t get back until it was too late.
“We did some good things but it would be a lot better if we had done them for 60 minutes, not 20.”
The Rangers were up 1-0 in a rather controlled atmosphere when Brandon Dubinsky, who had drawn an early penalty on P.K. Subban in a renewal of their battle that commenced at the Garden in Tuesday’s 2-1 Montreal victory when he was slew-footed, was called for roughing at 12:10, the first of his three penalties.
Roman Hamrlik powered one through at 13:19 to tie the score, and when Tomas Plekanec scored on another power play at 14:50 following a penalty to Mike Sauer, the Rangers had allowed as many power-play goals in 1:31 as they had in the previous 10 games. Andrei Kostitsyn scored at even strength at 16:03.
“Dubi loses his composure there; he has to stay in control,” said Tortorella, who engaged in a brief second-period shouting match with a heckling fan behind the bench. “It’s about trying to win the game.
“But I think it’s going to be a good lesson. Dubi will get it straightened out. He’s an intense guy who is a huge part of the hockey team.”
The Marian Gaborik-Derek Stepan-Wojtek Wolski combination struggled again. Sean Avery was as effective as anyone, but had fewer minutes through two than any forward other than Kris Newbury.
The coach moved Avery onto the line with Boyle and Brandon Prust, shifted Anisimov to the middle between Dubinsky and Gaborik, played Wolski with Newbury and Ruslan Fedotenko and used Stepan between Zuccarello and Chris Drury for the third.
But it was too late.
“It’s definitely not that we ran out of time,” said Dan Girardi. “If we had played the right way the first two periods, we’d have given ourselves the chance to win, but we didn’t.”