By now, at this hour, the Rangers have undoubtedly awoken, man by man, they’ve, shaken off the weary fog of postgame slumber, they’ve already recognized a most familiar status report: four games played. Two games won. Two games lost. A best-of-three ahead of them, two of those games at the Garden.
“We’ve been here before,” John Tortorella said, quietly but defiantly.
They have. They were in this precise predicament against Ottawa, and survived. They were in this same spot against Washington. Survived. You start taking bullets and living to tell about it, it becomes easier to believe that you can survive [ital] any [ital] bullet, any caliber.
There’s only one flaw in that reasoning.
The Senators and the Capitals aren’t the Devils. They aren’t as skilled. They aren’t as tenacious. Neither has a goaltender to match the pedigree of Martin Brodeur, who last night reminded you that you can light his birth certificate on fire when the time comes to absolutely, positively win a hockey game. Neither had a leader quite like Zach Parise, who shook off a series that had literally (if temporarily) reduced him to silence to make like a one-man band in last night’s 4-1 victory: two goals, one assist, incalculable amounts of guts and guile.
The Devils? They aren’t intimidated by the Rangers’ shot-blocking, no matter how much people wanted to ascribe that on them after Game 1. They aren’t afraid of the Rangers’ chemistry or resilience, because they have both in equal supply themselves. They have a coach, Peter DeBoer, who time and again this season proved he has no problem matching Tortorella tantrum for tantrum, mind game for mind game, and did so again last night.
“Here’s what I think the Rangers saw last night,” Devils winger Ilya Kovalchuk said when the night was done and the series evened. “I think they saw a team that isn’t going away so easily.”
Deep down, they probably knew it, same as their army of fans did, too, despite the way they took to the talk-radio airwaves after Games 1 and 3, insisting that the Devils simply weren’t in the Blueshirts’ class. What the Rangers undoubtedly knew, however, is that they could easily have been down 0-3 instead of up 2-1; the Rangers’ greatest gift is an unwillingness to partake in self-deception. They don’t kid themselves. They are unfailingly honest about their own performances, an exacting standard set forth by their coach.
“We know how razor thin the margin is,” Ryan Callahan had said after Game 3.
And last night, the Devils made a point of underlining the point in bold ink, highlighting it in yellow. It was 2-0 after the first period, at which point it easily could’ve been 4-0 if anyone other than Henrik Lundqvist were patrolling their pipes. It was 3-0 by the time Mike Rupp offered a drive-by glove to Brodeur’s chest and to his face, a shocking lack of deference to the Hall of Fame goalie that drew Rupp a 10-minute misconduct and instantly propelled these teams into a higher plane of intensity.
“I guess I proved I can take a hit,” Broduer said playfully later on, talking about taking a shot from a guy he was teammates with – and friends – for two stints and five seasons. “I’m a pretty tough guy.”
It’s a pretty tough team. We saw that last year, when the core of this group tried to piece together an heroic – if ill-fated – run from the worst record in the league to the brink of the playoffs. We saw it in round one, when the Panthers had them down, when they needed to run back-to-back overtime gauntlets in order to survive and then plowed the Flyers in five.
“The Rangers get a lot of credit for their resilience, and they deserve it, they have a lot of character on that team,” Devils defenseman Bryce Salvadore said. “But I think it’s safe to say that we do, to.”
Best-of-three now, starting at the Garden tomorrow, the Rangers in a familiar old place and undoubtedly secure in the belief that they know how this script turns out in the end. And the Devils knowing something else: this time, there might just be a surprise plot twist waiting for everyone.