Question: Do you know the difference between Bobby Orr and Ryan McDonagh?
Answer: The Bruins would never have traded the rights to Orr to the Rangers in exchange for Scott Gomez.
Well, that difference among many.
And yet, as the Flyers approached Thursday’s Garden opener of their opening-round playoff series against the Blueshirts, one can be excused for wondering if Philadelphia’s coaching staff had super-imposed the No. 4 onto the back of McDonagh’s jersey given the emphasis the club seemed to be placing on the Rangers’ best player.
Indeed, coach Craig Berube reportedly had instructed his first line consisting of Claude Giroux, Scott Hartnell and Jakub Voracek to change its preferred style of rush-hockey to a form of dump-and-crash in order to: a) protect against offensive blue line turnovers that would trigger McDonagh leading the transition; and, b) wear down McDonagh by pounding the defenseman whenever he goes back to play the puck below the goal line.
“We want to get the puck behind [McDonagh] and force him to go 200 feet,” Hartnell said following the morning skate. “We want to be physical against him every chance we get, so we can wear him down over seven games.
“The last time we played here, he was the definite difference in that game. You have to know where he is at all times.”
The Flyers lost 3-1 to the Blueshirts in their final regular-season meeting March 26 at the Garden. McDonagh’s work included a signature snipe from 30 feet that gave his team a second period 2-0 lead in the Rangers’ and Henrik Lundqvist’s eighth straight victory over the Flyers in Manhattan.
The match ended with a nasty confrontation between McDonagh and Wayne Simmonds that featured a series of cross-checks and chops, with the Flyers winger slashing the defenseman’s left glove off his hand.
“I gave as good as I got,” McDonagh told The Post a few days later. “It’s part of it.”
Simmonds, always a force against the Rangers, will be on his horse seeking to take a piece out of every Rangers defenseman at every opportunity.
“If we get in there and do our jobs, hopefully they won’t want to go back for the puck by Game 2,” the winger said.
Fred Shero’s Flyers dumped the puck incessantly in Orr’s corner in the 1974 Finals, thus forcing him to turn, retreat and then navigate the length of the rink in what became an upset six-game Philadelphia victory.
Shero’s Rangers employed the same strategy against the Islanders’ Denis Potvin in the 1979 Cup semifinals in what became an upset six-game victory for the Blueshirts.
But neither time did the strategy signal a dramatic departure in style from those clubs’ approach during the regular season. But insisting that Giroux, who closed with a rush to finish third in the NHL scoring race with 86 points (28-58) in large part because he is so deadly on the rush, give up possession of the puck would seem a risky bit of business.
The Rangers, meanwhile, were not planning on deviating much at all. Coach Alain Vigneault had said earlier in the week the Blueshirts would stick with what had gotten them to the playoffs.
“We want to consistently play a fast-paced game in which we roll four lines and three defense pairs. That’s our strength,” Vigneault said. “That’s how we play. I’m comfortable with that.”
That’s the way Vigneault coached in Vancouver for the previous seven years. That’s the way he told the Rangers he intended to coach this season.
“Alain told us from Day One that the ice time would be a bit spread out,” Brad Richards said. “Everybody wants to play 22 minutes, but we’ve bought into this all year as a team and it helped us stay fresh down the stretch of an Olympic year where the schedule was compressed.
“That’s our team. We’re sticking to what got us here.”
As the home team, the Rangers would have the last change. If that was to their advantage following a season in which the Blueshirts won fewer than half of their games at the Garden (20-17-4), their biggest advantage might just have been the Flyers’ preoccupation with McDonagh.
Now if the Rangers’ MVP would fly through the air after scoring an overtime winner from in front.