WASHINGTON — I was in the blue seats in Section 419 on April 29, 1971, when Pete Stemkowski scored at 1:29 of the third overtime of Game 6 of the semifinals to send the Rangers to Game 7 against the Blackhawks in Chicago.
I know how it felt.
But I was also in front of the television three days later when Brad Park was called for icing, when Bobby Hull scored off yet another clean faceoff win by Pit Martin or Lou Angotti — I can’t remember which and I don’t particularly care to be reminded even 41 years later, so open remains the wound — almost exactly as the Golden Jet had in overtime of Game 5, and I watched the Rangers lose that Game 7 and go home for the year.
I know how that felt, too.
And so I understand exactly the point coach John Tortorella was making yesterday afternoon when he did his darnedest to downplay Wednesday night’s triple-overtime 2-1 Game 3 victory over the Capitals on Marian Gaborik’s goal after 114:41 of hockey.
This wasn’t a Grinch stealing Christmas from Rangers fans when he said, “To me, it was no big deal. … It’s part of what you have to do. …
“It was nothing special.”
This instead was a coach whose objective isn’t merely to stand behind the bench of a team that provides moments to remember.
This is a coach of a team on a mission to win 16 playoff games and take that ride up the Canyon of Heroes that has been in sight for months.
Game 3 wasn’t a destination stop for the Rangers, the middle of June is. That’s the point Tortorella was attempting to make yesterday, just as surely as he made it with his players in the minutes after the victory that served as a 114:41 documentary on the meaning of Black-and-Blueshirt hockey.
Still, Game 3 surely meant something. Victories like that in the playoffs just about always do, for of the 24 teams that have won playoff games at least 110 minutes long, 21 have won the respective series in which those victories were attained, even if some were in decisive games.
Tortorella said yesterday that he doesn’t believe the victory would “galvanize” his team, and that may be true, but it certainly reaffirms everything they believe about themselves and their ability to come out as the last men standing in games decided by willpower and mental toughness.
This is the one that should remove any shadow of a doubt for this team that is impossible not to admire. This was important for Gaborik, who scored what Henrik Lundqvist described as “the biggest goal of
the playoffs for us.”
This was important for The King, a winner in the Rangers’ longest game since 1939 after losing seven straight in OT and who was about as tired about being asked about it as he was immediately after
Game 3.
Gaborik, who was moved all over all game, didn’t play a single shift with Brad Richards and Carl Hagelin from early in the first overtime until the first shift of the third OT. But he scored playing on that unit off a feed from Richards.
This was important for depth guys like Brandon Prust, Mike Rupp and John Mitchell, who aren’t called on often by this bench-shortening coach, but who responded on Wednesday and thus should earn more time along the way.
There always are challenges to surmount along the way to a championship.
The farther a team advances, the more the earlier ones recede into memory, the more into perspective Games 3s of second rounds fall.
But sometimes the larger they appear in the rear-view mirror of the car leading the parade.
There are memories, and then are memories. Then is Stemkowski in 1971. But there is “Matteau! Matteau! Matteau!” from 1994.
Guess which one really turned out to be special.
larry.brooks@nypost.com