MONTREAL — John Moore should keep his phone on, because there is little doubt he will be getting a rather important call on Wednesday.
The Rangers defenseman delivered a devastating elbow to the head of Canadiens forward Dale Weise with 9:19 remaining in the third period of Montreal’s 7-4 win in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference finals on Tuesday night at the Bell Centre.
The hit earned Moore a five-minute elbowing major and a match penalty, and likely will earn him a suspension of some sort when he has a conversation with the Department of Player Safety. The one thing going in Moore’s favor is that after Weise appeared wobbly and incoherent, he went to the locker room and did return to the ice, playing three more shifts in the third.
“The league will do what it has to do,” Rangers coach Alain Vigneault said, his team’s lead in the best-of-seven now cut to 3-2 with Game 6 at the Garden on Thursday. “I think he was penalized on the ice. John is definitely not the type of player to try to hurt someone, but it was a late hit and it was the right call on the ice.”
Montreal coach Michel Therrien said Weise “went to the quiet room and saw a doctor, and they felt that he was good to go.”
Yet the comparisons to the hit that the Canadiens Brandon Prust laid on Derek Stepan in Game 3 — a hit that was not penalized but broke Stepan’s jaw and earned Prust a two-game suspension, allowing him to come back for Game 6 — were unavoidable.
“It’s not fun to watch those,’’ said Montreal forward Rene Bourque, who had a hat trick. “We had one on our side in New York, but obviously I think it was a dirty play.’’
The most likely replacement for Moore would be Raphael Diaz, who has played two games this postseason, the most recent being Game 4 in the second round against the Penguins on May 7.
Just before the game, the Canadiens announced top-four defenseman Alexei Emelin would not play due to an undisclosed injury. Therrien did little to shed light on the situation afterward.
“He got injured last game,” Therrien said, “and it’s a body injury.”
Taking his place was slick-skating Nathan Beaulieu.
The Rangers are 14-2 in best-of-seven playoff series in which they held a 3-2 lead following Game 5. The Rangers have won 10-of-16 Game 6s when holding a 3-2 lead in the series.
Chris Kreider had a career postseason high with four points (one goal, three assists). He also had a tripping penalty 22 seconds into the game which lead to Alex Galchenyuk’s game-opening, power-play goal.
Former Islander and current Canadiens forward Thomas Vanek played just 9:29, and got three shifts in the third period. Yet he still played more than his teammates, veteran center Daniel Briere, who got a game-low 6:23, with one shift in the third.