PHILADELPHIA — In an attempt to confuse everyone, most notably the opposing team, Rangers coach Alain Vigneault was vague about his lineup for Game 3 of this first-round series against the Flyers on Tuesday night at the Wells Fargo Center.
Unusually, Vigneault never instructed his team to take line rushes at the morning skate, and the confusion mounted when he had a rather long on-ice conversation with rugged forward Dan Carcillo, who has been a healthy scratch for the first two games of the series, as well as six of the final 12 of the regular season.
When first asked about his inability to create the personnel matchups he wants because of the Flyers getting the last change at home, Vigneault began his vagueness.
“That answer will come tonight around 8:00,” said Vigneault, whose team split the first two games of the best-of-seven series at the Garden. “Obviously they have plans they want to implement, and we’ve got an idea of what we want to do, so we’ll see what happens.”
Then asked directly about his own possible lineup change, Vigneault punted.
“Again,” he said, “same answer.”
If it is Carcillo that enters the lineup, the most likely player to come out would be 23-year-old rookie Jesper Fast, who got just three shifts in the third period of Game 2 as Vigneault shortened his bench in an attempt to tie a game that wound up as a 4-2 loss.
And though Vigneault did not divulge his lineup, he did offer some commentary on the attributes of Carcillo – you know, if he plays.
“Dan is an experienced player,” Vigneault said. “He brings energy to a team. He’s a hard, smart player. He goes to the tough areas, and when he has an opportunity to lay a good, physical hit, he does that. With him in our lineup this year, we’ve had a very good record.”
That record with Carcillo in the lineup would be 19-9-3. He played 31 of a possible 40 games since coming over in a trade with the Kings on Jan. 4 in exchange for a conditional seventh-round pick, a trade that happened because of a broken leg suffered by the Rangers’ regular tough-guy, Derek Dorsett.
Although Carcillo came off the ice just about the same time as Fast – as well as Dorsett – he refused, in his regular gruff demeanor, to answer the question of whether he was in or not. Yet he did comment on how the game changes in the playoffs.
“This time of year, it’s a man’s game,” Carcillo said.
Although Carcillo has been suspended or fined by the league 10 different times over his eight-year career with five different teams, he has been rather under control since joining the Rangers. That would be, except for the one game he played in this building back on March 1, when he went berserk against the team he played for from 2008-2011, earning an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty, followed by a 10-minute misconduct, in two altercations with Philadelphia counterpart Zac Rinaldo.
“I’ve haven’t really taken any minors since I’ve been here,” Carcillo said. “Just play the game hard.”
Forward Martin St. Louis was announced as a finalist for the Lady Byng Trophy, awarded “to the player adjudged to have exhibited the best type of sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct combined with a high standard of playing ability.”
“It’s an honor to be nominated for any award,” said St. Louis, who won the trophy three consecutive times from 2010-2012. “I think I’m focusing on something bigger and better right now.”