So here were the Canadiens, standing on small podiums in a conference room in a midtown hotel on Friday afternoon, all saying they thought the hit from Brandon Prust on Derek Stepan was … OK?
“You never want to see a player get hurt,” started Montreal coach Michel Therrien, “but it was a good hit, it was a hockey hit. Obviously, Stepan got hurt on it, but did it change the momentum of the game? I don’t know. I can’t say.”
The players thought differently about the latter part, knowing the shoulder-to-chin delivery from Prust to Stepan at 2:55 of the first period in Thursday’s Game 3 — which earned Prust a two-game suspension and broke Stepan’s jaw, requiring surgery and keeping him out for an unknown period of time — was more than just a boon for that 3-2 overtime win for the Habs.
It could prove to be a turning point in this best-of-seven series, the Rangers now holding a scant 2-1 lead going into Sunday night’s Game 4 at the Garden.
“Prusty wants to set the tone to that game, so he goes, hits the guy,” forward David Desharnais said. “I thought it was a good hit.”
The 5-foot-7 Desharnais was the most outspoken in the support of the hit, saying there was no intent to injure, but not backing off the impact of what happened.
“You know, it’s pretty fast out there,” he said. “You never want to see a guy injured like that. But like I said, we were fighting for our lives [Thursday] and wanted to set the tone.
“[Prust] is not going out there saying, ‘I want to injure that guy, I want to break his jaw.’ He just wants to get the guys going.”
When Therrien was asked about the hit, he continually referred to the fact his team lost starting goaltender Carey Price to a collision from Rangers forward Chris Kreider in Game 1, a collision Therrien had first called “accidental,” then called “reckless” upon finding out that Price was out for the series with a right-knee injury.
“Like Kreider, his intention, even if he was going hard to the net and then laying on Carey Price, I’m sure his intention was not to hurt Carey Price,” Therrien said. “Brandon Prust, he tried to finish his check. His intention, honestly, was not to hurt Stepan.”
Prust was actually the one to call Kreider’s hit on Price “accidentally on purpose,” and that made this event even deeper in meaning. As Game 4 waits on the horizon, it’s clear, at the very least, the Canadiens will not go down meekly.
“Those things happen,” Habs forward Tomas Plekanec said about Prust’s hit. “You usually expect some kind of answer from the other team when those kind of things happen. It goes both ways.”