Rangers 3, Caps 2
Days like this one are inevitable in a Stanley Cup playoff series. The Rangers and Caps have played three games and none has been decided by more than a pair of goals. This time it was New York that got the fortunate bounce when Brandon Dubinsky faked out Caps defenseman Karl Alzner, drove hard to the net and was rewarded with a series of fluky bounces that gave his team the winning goal with 99 seconds to play. Read the details in our game story here. Series lead is now 2-1 in favor of Washington.
Got the sense before the game that New York coach John Tortorella was a confident man. Of course, he may have been more of a con man, play-acting for the sake of his players. Not that they would even read or see his comments from a pregame chat with the media. More than likely Tortorella just carried his message to us directly to them: We’ve lost two close games. We could easily be up 2-0 in the series ourselves. We’re at home. Let’s use that to our advantage.
“I thought we were really aggressive in Washington,” Tortorella said. “We are not far off. Now it is 2-1, but it could be reverse. It could be us 2-1. It is that close. We are not going about our business any different. We are just going about our game.”
Indeed, the Rangers looked a lot closer to the team that pounded the Caps twice this season. Right from the first shift they were dumping pucks into the offensive zone and making Washington’s defensemen pay the price. The media seating for home and visiting beat writers at Madison Square Garden is directly above the tunnel where both the Zamboni and the visiting players enter and exit the ice. You’re maybe 20 feet above ice level and can feel the vibrations from every hit on that end of the rink – the side where New York shoots twice. It is a sight to behold when the Rangers get their cycle game cranking. That group of forwards is a handful to deal with. They just don’t have enough skill to deviate from that game. But they played it well on Sunday – and sustained it – in front of their boisterous fans at the Garden.
“We have to and [the Caps] are doing the same thing…trying to get pucks to the net and people to the blue [paint],” Tortorella said. “I think we were more ready to shoot today. I think we played better at grinding underneath the hash marks. That is how we have to do it. We are not good enough – we have to grind.”
Meanwhile, scoring chances were there for the Caps – but they were sporadic and from tough spots on the ice. Too many times they missed Henrik Lundqvist’s net completely – 15 shots were off target, including two each from Alex Ovechkin, Alex Semin, Mike Green and John Carlson. They also didn’t shoot enough (25 shots), according to forward Mike Knuble, though some of that must be attributed to 16 penalty minutes, 14 short-handed.
“It’s one game. We’re still leading the series,” Knuble said. “I think every game’s been close. And it’s almost a coin flip out there today and it came up a coin flip for them. Have to give them credit. They ground out the game and popped one in the last two minutes. We got some time here, a couple days and we’ll rest, get back at it and be ready to play here again on Wednesday.”
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