MONTREAL – This is all about one game – and one win – now.
The obituary on the Montreal Canadiens season is half-written and you’d be hard pressed to find anyone outside their dressing room that truly believes they can win four of the next five against the New York Rangers without Carey Price. To have any chance at all they have to deliver a victory at Madison Square Garden on Thursday night.
It really is that simple.
In Game 2, Montreal outpaced the Rangers in desperation, in creating scoring chances and in shot attempts (52-40 at even strength; 80-44 overall). The Habs led everywhere but the scoreboard – save for a brief 17-second stretch in the first period – and that had to be discouraging.
Naturally, they came away from the evening believing that the bounce-back performance was a sign of good things to come. Maybe. If not, we’ll soon be hearing a lot about the Rangers trying to bring the Stanley Cup back to Broadway for the first time since 1994.
“We can feel good about (that game) … I think there’s a lot of stuff we can build on,” Canadiens forward Brendan Gallagher said after Monday’s 3-1 loss. “We didn’t get the result we wanted, but if we have that effort for the rest of the series we feel we’ll give ourselves a chance.”
Henrik Lundqvist’s presence is looming pretty large over this Eastern Conference final. So good was the man they call “The King” that it’s unlikely Montreal would have won this game even if Carey Price hadn’t suffered an unspecified right knee injury over the weekend.
It wasn’t just how he weathered the all-out assault the Canadiens launched in the opening minutes, either. Equally important was Lundqvist’s ability to stand tall during a Habs power play early in the third period with the home team looking for life. Seeds of doubt had to be planted when he calmly gloved a P.K. Subban point shot – one of nine (!) the Habs defenceman put on him in the game – and came away looking like a sure-handed outfielder who had just settled under a lazy pop fly.
The recent numbers are right in line with Lundqvist’s big reputation. He stopped 40 of 41 shots in Game 2 and has turned away 60 of 63 in the series and 162 of 168 during a five-game Rangers winning streak.
“You know what? The reason why we lost the game tonight was Lundqvist,” said Habs coach Michel Therrien. “Lundqvist was phenomenal, phenomenal. Stole the game.”
Montreal certainly didn’t lose it because of the bold decision to give Dustin Tokarski the start in goal over Peter Budaj. For a 24-year-old making his first career start in the Stanley Cup playoffs he looked fairly composed on the ice and projected nothing but confidence off of it.
The first goal he allowed came right after Montreal’s Max Pacioretty had opened the scoring and seemed almost pre-destined. Not only did Ryan McDonagh’s harmless point shot carom off Josh Gorges, it hit the left post and went in. Even Rangers coach Alain Vigneault referred to it as a “lucky bounce.”
The only one he would truly like back was the eventual winner, which came at 18:58 of the first period. Tokarski was slow reacting to a cross-ice pass during a 3-on-2 and couldn’t get to Rick Nash’s one-timer. The goal Martin St. Louis later added on the power play came courtesy of a perfect shot and with big Chris Kreider providing a screen.
However, what shouldn’t be lost from the game was the fact that the Rangers would have been digging out of an early hole if not for Lundqvist. In the words of St. Louis, he “gave us time to find our legs.”
“He made a few more big saves, game-changers, than I did and that was the difference tonight,” said Tokarski.
Lundqvist has appeared in 645 more NHL games than his Montreal counterpart. At age 32, he is still performing at a high level but he’s doing so with a heightened awareness about how rare these opportunities are.
In fact, the Rangers goaltender is drawing tremendous motivation from the team’s 2012 playoff run, which ended in the Eastern Conference final with a loss to the New Jersey Devils. When he later reflected on that series he felt the team could have given more than it did.
“We didn’t reach our full potential (last time) and it was extremely disappointing to end the season like that,” said Lundqvist. “If you go out and you play your absolute best and it’s not enough, it’s easier to accept. … That’s my goal right now to really try to reach my full potential and inspire teammates and everybody that’s helping us right now to kind of reach that level and see how far it takes us.”
The Canadiens would be wise to listen closely to those words. There is certainly no guarantee that they’ll get another opportunity as good as this one – even if it has been compromised by an injury to their top player.
As we move to Manhattan, it’s tough to shake the feeling of inevitability to this series. But things change quickly in the playoffs and Montreal still has an outside chance if it can get a win next time out.
