PITTSBURGH — It’s the type of situation that had Chris Kreider looking up, shaking his head, and hoping he didn’t hear what he just thought he did.
“Shhhhhh,” Kreider said Monday afternoon, reaching to knock three times on the wood of the adjoining locker.
The Rangers’ 23-year-old winger had just been told he has played three Game 7s in his brief NHL career, and had won them all. The Rangers have won four in a row over the past three seasons and, of course, Kreider knew it.
So Tuesday night at Consol Energy Center brings one more, a second-round series against the Penguins that will have the Rangers face their second Game 7 this postseason — and as reluctant as Kreider was to acknowledge the previous success, he hopes to continue the streak.
“I think [Game 7] is not really terribly different,” Kreider said, trying to convince himself after the Blueshirts had a spirited practice at their facility in Westchester before boarding a flight back to western Pennsylvania for the third time this series. “I guess it’s different in context, if you look at the past few games.”
Though it may not always be the case going into a Game 7 — and certainly wasn’t for the decisive match in the first round against the Flyers — the context of the past few games is overtly important.
The Rangers were down, 3-1, in this best-of-seven series less than a week ago, and that’s when heartbreak struck with Martin St. Louis’ mother, France, dying suddenly on Thursday. The next day, with St. Louis in the lineup, the Rangers stormed out to win Game 5 in rousing fashion, 5-1. They followed it up with a very special Mother’s Day present on Sunday, a 3-1 win at the Garden that woke up that gentrified palace on 7th Avenue and enabled this decisive final showdown, a situation the Rangers have relished in the recent past.
“It’s something that is front and center in everyone’s mind,” Kreider said about St. Louis, specifically the moment on Sunday when he scored the game-opening goal. “It’s kind of an eerie feeling when he scores the first goal and the crowd starts chanting his name. It was heartwarming and deserved, those are the two words that come to mind. It’s something that’s hard to put into words.”
Now the question lies in how much of the momentum gained in the past two games can be carried over into this one, or if momentum is nothing but a figment of the viewers’ imagination.
“If you talk to a lot of guys,” Kreider said, “I don’t think they really believe in momentum.”
In a league-wide postseason that has been one seesaw series after another, that very well might be the case. But this one, with a team rallying around one singular purpose, the focal point being such a revered veteran as St. Louis — no matter that he has been with the Rangers only since the March 5 trade deadline — well, maybe things are different here.
“When a thing like that happens, I think everybody cares for one another even more,” said goalie Henrik Lundqvist, “because you realize we play this game together and without everyone in here, it’s hard to have success.”
St. Louis certainly believes that to be the case, being one of three guys in the locker room who has hoisted a Stanley Cup and knowing teamwork and togetherness is integral to that process.
“I remember in our meeting prior to playoffs starting, Marty had said, ‘We don’t need one guy driving the bus, we need 20 guys driving the bus to have success in the playoffs’,” coach Alain Vigneault said. “He’s absolutely right.”
And if that bus is powered by an engine that was kick-started by sadness, then so be it.
“I really felt like I was getting closer to my teammates every day,” said St. Louis, who has the funeral planned for later in the week back near his native Montreal. “But when you go through something like this, I think I feel even closer to each and every one of them with the way they’ve treated me that past few days.
“We’ve been pushing,” he continued. “We were battle-tested in the first round. This is another Game 7 — these are the games you want to play, so it’s exciting.”