The way Henrik Lundqvist was playing last night, Devils coach Jacques Lemaire could have chosen Maurice Richard, Gordie Howe and Mario Lemieux for the shootout and still not have scored.
But Lemaire didn’t pick Ilya Kovalchuk, instead he went with Zach Parise, who couldn’t get the puck through the Rangers’ goalie’s five-hole. He also went with Patrik Elias, who couldn’t beat Lundqvist’s glove, and Travis Zajac, who went for very little room against the big-as-the-Prudential-Center-Lundqvist and missed on the stick side.
Erik Christensen, the Rangers’ first shooter, rattled one in off the post, and the Rangers, down to their last 17 seconds of regulation when Christensen fed Chris Drury at the goalmouth for the tying goal, scrambled out of Newark with a 4-3 win. The Blueshirts cut Boston’s hold on eighth place to three points and left Lemaire behind to explain why he didn’t use one of the deadliest players in the game in the shootout.
“He was 2-for-7 [this season]. That’s why we didn’t,” Lemaire said. “Jamie [Langenbrunner] was next, Kovy would have gone after that.”
He smiled.
“It’s easy [to second-guess] after the fact,” Lemaire added. “I would have changed all three if I knew what was going to happen.”
And had Colin White known that Christensen was going to his backhand, the tying feed would never have gotten to Drury. And had Artem Anisimov, who wisely held the puck off Brandon Prust’s feed, not outwaited Marty Brodeur and artfully hit the net from a tough angle, and Lundqvist never had been born, the Devils would have won easily.
Kovalchuk, who scored first by beating Wade Redden to a Brian Rolston rebound, who is nine-for-36 in career shootouts took Lemaire’s decision in stride.
“Coach’s decision,” he said. “We have a lot of great shooters.”
Indeed, Elias and Jamie Langenbrunner had to be pinpoint earlier to find net behind Lundqvist, to whom the Devils tipped their helmets.
“They pulled the goalie and sent the puck behind the net,” Lemaire said. “Our center [Elias] was up a little high and was late.
“Thing is, we shouldn’t be there at the end,” Lemaire said. “We had enough chances, we could have run away with the game easy. Their goalie was great.”