It had been nearly a month since Brandon Dubinsky last put on a Rangers sweater. But watching the forward play in last night’s 5-3 loss to the Devils in Game 5, you couldn’t help but think he hadn’t missed a shift.
“I felt good,” Dubinsky said after logging 15:38 over 20 shifts for the Blueshirts. “It’s the Eastern Conference finals and it’s a fast game, so it takes two or three shifts to get in there and try to get your timing.
“It’s a process, and I’ll just keep trying to get better for this team.”
Dubinsky returned to the lineup for the first time since suffering a right leg/foot injury in the Rangers’ Game 7 win against the Senators in the first round on April 26. Rangers coach John Tortorella immediately installed Dubinsky on his second line, alongside Artem Anisimov and Ryan Callahan, and Dubinsky rewarded his coach’s faith.
“He brought us some energy,” Tortorella said. “I thought that line was a pretty good line as far as some puck possession.”
Starting with his first shift, Dubinsky, who replaced John Mitchell in the Rangers’ lineup, made a point of making his presence felt. He threw his body around at every opportunity — even after the Rangers fell behind 3-0 less than halfway through the first period — and finished the game tied for second on the team with three hits.
“We had a couple of breakdowns,” Dubinsky said of the team’s early struggles. “I thought we had our energy, but we had a couple of breakdowns and found ourselves in a hole. After that, I thought we tried to fight back, and did a pretty good job controlling the play for most of the game.”
As the Rangers began to claw their way back into the game after falling behind by three goals, the Dubinsky-Anisimov-Callahan line was a major factor, and arguably the Blueshirts’ best line.
The three combined to score the Rangers second goal when, after Dubinsky’s attempted shot on net was deflected wide, Anisimov scooped up the loose puck and fired it to the front of the net and Callahan re-directed it past Martin Brodeur less than a minute into the second period, cutting the lead to 3-2.
But, in the end, it wasn’t enough to help the Rangers finish off their comeback from the early hole they dug for themselves. Now the Blueshirts head back to Newark for tomorrow’s Game 6 of this Battle of the Hudson with their season on the line.
“You have to build on [the positives] and have a short memory,” Dubinsky said. “We have been in this position before in these playoffs, and found a way to get it done. We don’t want to look ahead and say we have to win two games.
“We know we have to do that, but we just have to focus on winning one.”