LOS ANGELES — Dan Girardi was sitting in his stall, waiting for the hordes to enter to ask all the difficult questions. And Girardi, having been the culprit that cost the Rangers a 3-2 overtime loss in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup finals on Wednesday night at Staples Center, sat there and answered them all, straight-faced, never bowing his head or averting his eyes.
“You got to have short-term memory,” he said. “It’s a tough play, but there’s nothing I can do about it right now.”
Four and a half minutes into the overtime, with the tension of the Rangers needing 20 years to get back to this place, Girardi was skating backward in his zone when the puck bounced up over his stick. He fell to his knees, and from that place of indignity, hacked at it, sending it right at Mike Richards, who fed Justin Williams, all alone for a stroll toward the net.
“You can’t give Williams a shot like that,” Girardi said. “He’s pretty clutch in the playoffs.”
Known as Mr. Game 7 for his ability to put series away, Williams got to his heroics a bit early, ripping a wrist shot past Henrik Lundqvist’s blocker, sending Los Angeles into a frenzy and giving the Kings a 1-0 lead in the best-of-seven series.
“Maybe go higher next time or go to the corner and eat it, but, you know, I’m not going to dwell on it,” Girardi said. “I’m just going to move on and focus on tomorrow.”
When these two teams reconvene for Game 2 on Saturday, there will be some good the Rangers can take from this performance — almost all of it in the opening period. That’s when they staked themselves to a 2-0 lead behind goals from Benoit Pouliot and Carl Hagelin, then watched as the Kings, this group of seemingly eternal resilience, began to push back.
They got one from Kyle Clifford just before the first ended, then got the game-tying goal on a spectacular play from all-world defenseman Drew Doughty, putting the puck between his legs then beating Lundqvist high-glove to make it 2-2 with 6:36 gone by in the second.
“They definitely came with a push,” Brad Richards said, “but it’s up to us to stop that push.”
The Kings have come back from 3-0 and 3-2 series deficits this postseason, and needed the maximum of 21 games to get to this point. They won the Cup two years ago, beat the defending-champion Blackhawks in this year’s Western Conference finals, so a 2-0 deficit early in Game 1 — goodness, how little that seemed to matter.
“We know the last three years they’ve played a lot of playoff games and been down and out, and they just keep coming,” Richards said. “We’ve had our fair share of adversity also, and in the end it’s a one-goal game on the road that we had a chance to win.”
It sure didn’t seem like that in the third, when the Kings outshot the Rangers, 20-3, and the only reason the Blueshirts had a chance was because Lundqvist became impenetrable, doing all he could to will a win. In the final minutes of regulation, there was an unbelievable back-and-forth sequence with Anze Kopitar and Hagelin trading chances, and it ended when Jeff Carter had a great wraparound look that Lundqvist made a diving save on.
“It was intense,” Lundqvist said of the third, “but they throw a lot from the outside to try and create chances from rebounds. There were a couple close calls.”
Yet it was more than just a close call when Girardi made his costly mistake, the opening blood of the Cup finals went to L.A.
“We had a shot to win the game,” said defenseman Marc Staal, joining Lundqvist and Girardi as the three longest-tenured Rangers. “It’s frustrating that we didn’t do it, but it’s just one game.”
Staal said that again and again, “it’s one game.” Just so happened to be one game that now belongs to the Kings, and one game that set the tone for the series.