PHILADELPHIA — With all that has led up to this moment, with all of the work and battling it has taken for both the Rangers and Flyers to get to this point, the thing that matters most now is less concrete, less tangible.
Because, as has been explained by coaches and players alike, what separates these two teams heading into Tuesday night’s Game 6 of their first-round playoff series at Wells Fargo Center is very little. The Rangers are the team with the opportunity to win and advance, up in the best-of-seven contest, 3-2. But the elimination game, boy, that one is never easy, and it’s easy to see why.
“They’re going to be desperate, and human nature is [for us] to say, ‘We’ve still got a chance if we lose. We’ve still got another game,’ ” Brad Richards said after Monday’s optional practice at the Garden. “When that creeps into your mind, I think that’s when you don’t play as desperate as they will. They don’t have another chance.
“It’s really experience sometimes, having been through it, knowing how important it is to try and close this out.”
If the Rangers can close out the Flyers, they would advance to face the Penguins, who ousted the Blue Jackets in six games with a 4-3 victory Monday night.
Richards was an integral part — albeit not the most productive part — of the Rangers team that made it to the Eastern Conference finals two seasons ago. That year, it took them seven grueling games against the Senators in the first round, plus another hard-fought seven against the Capitals in the second round, before they succumbed to all the punishment piled on them from their opponents and from then-coach John Tortorella’s draining style of play. The Devils took them out in six games in that conference final, and those members of the team who are still around — 11 in all, including the injured Chris Kreider — have not forgotten.
“I think our preparation will be better than it was two years ago, especially for the guys that have gone through it and know how hard it is to finish out a series,” Richards said. “It’s always the hardest game to win. We have to prepare and focus and not fall back on, ‘Oh well, we’ve got another game.’ Once you start thinking like that, you let off your game.”
Even first-year coach Alain Vigneault is cognizant of how hard this singular task of putting a team away can be, especially with the first chance.
“There’s this theory that the last one to win is the hardest, and it’s probably true,” Vigneault said. “It permits you to move on, so there’s probably more desperation from both teams — the team that can end their season, and the team [that] wants to pursue their season. It makes for what players are in this game for, and coaches and fans. It makes for great hockey.”
Great hockey might be a reach to describe how this series has been played, but that does not limit the Flyers’ ability to raise their game to heights the Rangers have not seen. Philadelphia is still the same team that started the season 1-7, saw that go to 4-10-1, and yet still finish with 94 points, third in the division, just two points behind the Rangers.
“You understand what’s at stake for them, so you try and put yourself in their shoes and see what their mind-set [is], what their mentality is,” defenseman Ryan McDonagh said, “and somehow wrap your game up, wrap that situation up in your head and approach it with the mentality that you’ve got to go above and beyond that.”