PITTSBURGH — It was Thursday, early evening, just less than three days until Mother’s Day. Future Hall of Famer Martin St. Louis was on a plane that just landed in Pittsburgh. His Rangers were already in a dire mood, being down in their best-of-seven, second-round playoff series with the Penguins, 3-1, facing elimination in Friday night’s Game 5 at Consol Energy Center.
And then before even leaving the airport, St. Louis was pulled aside, told his 63-year-old mother, France, had died. Reports surfaced saying it was from the aftereffects of a heart attack.
St. Louis immediately got on another plane and headed back to his native Montreal, where his heartbroken family waited.
“It was obviously a very, very quiet bus ride from the airport to the hotel,” coach Alain Vigneault said.
St. Louis and Vigneault spoke on the phone for a while, with the coach telling his 38-year-old winger, “There are more important things than hockey,” as Vigneault relayed just before the game on Friday.
“You have to do what’s right,” he told him. “You have to take care of your dad.”
St. Louis went to sleep, woke up, and spoke to his dad, Normand. Then he made what has to be one of the toughest decisions of his life, texting both Vigneault and Garden executive Jason Vogel, saying he wanted to come back, he wanted to play.
“Him and his dad both agreed that his mom would want him to be here,” Vigneault said. “And that’s what he did.”
So there was St. Louis, getting ready to skate around the rink for pregame warmups, the 18,638 fans waving black-and-gold towels, screaming for blood, urging their Penguins to put the Rangers out of their misery and send them back to New York, back to pack up for the summer and call it a season. And there was St. Louis, preparing to sit on the bench, go on the ice and play in the most important game of the season with a heart that could have been nothing but heavy.
“I think that says a lot about him,” Vigneault said, “but it also says, I think, a lot about his teammates, that he would want to be here to play.”
It was on Wednesday night, in the chaos of the Rangers locker room, when St. Louis was crystalline in his self-evaluation, saying the 4-2 drubbing was “Probably the worst playoff game I can ever remember playing,” and adding, “I was awful.”
Since coming over in a trade with the Lightning on March 5, St. Louis has been underwhelming in his short time with the Rangers. He had just one goal, a short-handed one, in 19 regular-season games. He then seemed to pick it up in a the first round of the playoffs, when he led the Blueshirts with two goals and four assists en route to a seven-game victory over the Flyers.
But then this series started, and St. Louis had not only been unable to collect a point through the first four games, he had become a shell of himself, a player who had won a Hart Trophy as league MVP and two Art Ross Trophies as the scoring leader, and one that suddenly couldn’t even enter the offensive zone cleanly.
“I had the opportunity to play with Marty in the Olympics and get to know him,” Penguins captain Sidney Crosby said. “He’s a great guy, he competes hard, and I’m sure it’s not easy. So we’re definitely thinking about him.”
General manager Glen Sather sent his own captain, Ryan Callahan, along with a 2014 second-round pick and a 2015 first-round pick to Tampa Bay in order to obtain St. Louis.
A condition of the trade was if the Rangers make it to the conference finals, the second-rounder would become a first-rounder. And before Game 5, that seemed close to an impossibility. Since 1987, just less than 10 percent of teams in this situation have been able to come back from 3-1 down in a series to win.
Now, this Rangers team was going to have to do it in the wake of tragedy.
“Our guys care, our guys are trying real hard,” Vigneault said, “and that’s what we’re going to try to do.”