The last thing you expect is for an NHL coach to give his team an excuse for losing, yet that’s what the Rangers’ Alain Vigneault did following his team’s 2-0 Game 3 defeat by the Penguins on Monday night at the Garden.
Before the game, before the Blueshirts were shut out for the second time in 27 hours by Marc-Andre Fleury, before the Rangers fell behind in the series 2-1 with Game 4 coming up on Wednesday, the coach all but mocked and dismissed a question regarding the brutal march through late April and early May in which New York was playing its fifth game in seven nights.
But when it was over, when the Rangers had suffered back-to-back shutouts in the playoffs for the first time since the 1937 Finals, Vigneault essentially cited the schedule as cause for his team’s inability to score.
“We were forced to play a stupid schedule,” the coach said in response to a question about the power play that failed five more times but looked reasonably good in doing so. “Five games in seven nights … I’m real proud of how our guys handled it … they handled it real well. We put our best foot forward in every game.”
Yes, the Rangers did face an undue burden, but it’s difficult to assign blame to the NHL given that the Garden (and not Gary Bettman) seems to have booked enough events to create this scheduling issue, and by the way, what in the world would have been the scenario if the Knicks had made the playoffs?
Beyond that, though, the coach has given his team a crutch for its inability to overcome this adversity. He has played into the storyline that Penguins coach Dan Bylsma has been pounding over and over again since the morning of Game 1.
Here are a few questions: What about all of the other playoff games the last two years in which Rick Nash hasn’t scored? What about all of the other power plays on which the Rangers have come up dry? And what about all those other games Marty St. Louis has spent in a New York uniform in which he scored a sum of three goals?
Vigneault has been an outstanding coach for this team, bringing the right temperament and the right approach to a group of players who believed they’d been subject to an abusive relationship with John Tortorella, their former coach.
But this response to a frustrating defeat through which the Blueshirts carried the play and brought the fight to the Penguins is in some ways reminiscent of the way Vigneault responded to adversity in the 2011 Final against Boston when he was behind the Vancouver bench.
The specific moment in question at that time came when Canucks defenseman Aaron Rome was suspended for the rest of the series after concussing Bruins winger Nathan Horton with a blow to the head late in the first period of Game 3.
The Canucks led the series 2-0 in a then-scoreless Game 3. The Bruins won the match 8-1 en route to capturing the Cup with a Game 7 victory in Vancouver. This past Saturday, Vigneault referenced that series in citing Boston’s strong fourth line as the impetus for him to adopt a four-line philosophy.
But having covered that game and its aftermath, when Vigneault and Boston coach Claude Julien conducted press conferences in the wake of the sentencing decision, it always struck me that the Bruins handled the adversity of losing first-line wing Horton with far more equanimity than the Canucks handled the adversity of losing third-pair defenseman Rome.
Nobody on the Bruins’ side blamed the league. Nobody weighed in on the controversy. Not so for the Canucks, who seemed to have a victims’ psychology the rest of the way.
The Rangers don’t have time to play victims here, not that any player in the post-game room sought sympathy or cited the schedule as explanation for the drought. Listen, if fatigue had been the determinative issue, the Rangers would not have outshot the Penguins 35-15 as they did in this Game 3.
The schedule can’t be blamed for Sidney Crosby’s five-hole goal from the left circle against Henrik Lundqvist at 2:34 of the second, and it can’t be blamed for Jussi Jokinen’s breakaway score out of the penalty box at 15:20 of the second, either. It can’t be blamed for a power play that has failed on 34 straight advantages.
Vigneault is a big-time coach who has carried himself professionally in doing himself and the Rangers proud this season. But giving his team an excuse doesn’t wear especially well on him. For the Blueshirts’ sake, no one will use it.