PITTSBURGH — The Game 4 debacle at the Garden did not take place in a vacuum, and neither will Game 5 here on Friday night.
Even as the Blueshirts focus on forcing the Penguins back to the Garden for a Game 6 on Sunday, Rick Nash’s future on Broadway is now and will be a hot-button issue that general manager Glen Sather and his staff will be obligated to confront in the wake of the mean-spirited booing that rained down upon No. 61 in the third period of Wednesday’s match.
Nash was not the biggest culprit in the dispiriting defeat, in which the Rangers looked like direct descendants of those teams that missed the playoffs seven straight years from 1997 to 2004. He led the club with four shots and was second with four hits — increasing his playoff total to 12 hits in 11 games after recording 11 in 65 games during the regular season.
But let’s be serious. No. 61 was the obvious target following a couple of spotlighted gaffes, including the turnover that led to the Penguins’ go-ahead shorthanded goal in the second period and the flubbed shot on a two-on-one that never came close to the net.
Beyond that, he is the obvious target, having failed to score a goal so far in the tournament after getting one in 12 games last year.
Let’s do the math: One goal in 23 playoff games as a Ranger does not equal a salary-cap charge of $7.8 million a year through 2017-18. But what can Sather do, and what would he even be willing to do, given that a) the GM lusted after Nash for almost two full years before finally acquiring him from the Blue Jackets, and b) Nash has led the Blueshirts in goal-scoring in each of his two seasons with the club?
Remember this: Nash brought his no-trade clause with him from Columbus, so he would have to be amenable to leaving. Perhaps — after Wednesday’s booing, which may not abate given the Garden crowd’s history of scapegoating particular athletes and not letting go — Nash, a fairly sensitive soul, will decide that it is better to go if provided an attractive option.
But even though Sather was able to find a team willing to take Scott Gomez and his onerous contract, it wouldn’t seem as if there would be a sweepstakes for Nash this time around — not with the contract, not with the playoff history, not with the concussion history.
You would have to think the Rangers would get pennies on the dollar back for Nash, then would be left with, well, with whom exactly to score the 30-something regular-season goals that are kind of automatic for No. 61?
The Rangers have one amnesty buyout remaining. If they were to use it on Nash, the team would then be committing to Brad Richards through 2019-20 and the potential whopping cap-recapture penalties that would apply if No. 19 were to retire before the end of his contract.
Potential penalties aside, the Rangers then would be committing $6.67 million per and a top-nine spot to Richards — who, despite numerous admirable qualities on and off the ice, is the quarterback of a dysfunctional power play that has undermined the team in the playoffs for two years.
There’s Nash’s future and Richards’ future. There is also the significant matter of first-line center Derek Stepan, who is having the third bad playoffs of his four-year career, with last year’s average performance the outlier. Stepan has appeared slow and indecisive through two rounds. If neither the team nor he can stage a reversal of fortune beginning on Friday, Sather likely would have to test the market on Stepan over the summer.
It appears hopeless for the Rangers, who have been almost toyed with by Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin the past three games, as Pittsburgh coach Dan Bylsma has steadily increased the amount of time the power couple has been on the ice together. It’s gone from approximately 2:30 in Game 1 to 9:35 in Game 2 to 11:30 in Game 3 to 14:15 in Game 4. Even though the Rangers have been able to get their matches, they’ve been overmatched.
It appears hopeless, but then it essentially always does when a team is down to its final strike, trailing 3-1, and especially so for a lower seed. But 26 teams, or just less than 10 percent, have pulled it off. Six have done it since 2009, four as lower seeds. Another eight since the salary-cap era began in 2006 have come from 3-0 or 3-1 down to force a Game 7.
It starts with a single shift. Honestly, it does. It takes a big play. It takes belief. It takes goaltending. Last Saturday, the Rangers were up 1-0 and being celebrated. Now, they are playing for their lives. Some are playing for their careers on Broadway.