Alain Vigneault believes his team is in the thick of a gruelling playoff series.
“It’s been intense since the first game,” the Rangers coach said after Sunday’s Game 5 victory. “There’s been a lot of hitting going on, and it’s been a real tough series thus far.”
To be fair, every playoff series is tough and tenacious, and the New York Rangers’ best-of-seven with the Philadelphia Flyers has been rife with story lines and memorable moments.
Just not as much as the rest of the series featured in this dramatic first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
When you hear “Rangers vs. Flyers,” you think of one of the sport’s best feuds. There’s a reason these teams were tapped for the 2012 Winter Classic. Yet this series has been a dud in the drama department. There has been little controversy, few fighting words, and the rabidity of the opposing fan bases has even been a disappointment. Instead of being longtime division rivals, you’d almost get the sense these two teams like each other.
Sure, there have been post-whistle scraps. But there hasn’t been a major penalty or misconduct in any of the first five games. The series’ biggest villain — Daniel Carcillo — was a healthy scratch for the pivotal Game 5 on Sunday, as Vigneault opted for skill over snarl.
Carl Hagelin leads the series in penalty minutes with 10, thanks to his three-minor-penalty effort on Sunday, and that kind of tells you how tame things have been.
It’s the only Round 1 series that has not featured overtime — and only Game 4 was a one-goal game. Plus, the venues, two of the league’s most notorious for their hostility, have felt relatively tame — unless you’re a referee.
Madison Square Garden on Sunday seemed more excited over Jim Carrey and Whoopi Goldberg’s Jumbotron cameos than anything happening on the ice.
Flyers captain Claude Giroux created waves when he guaranteed Philly would win Game 4, but it was the team delivering for its captain instead of the Giroux willing his teammates to victory. Besides Giroux’s guarantee, there has been little in the way of media posturing. Each squad appears hell-bent on not creating bulletin-board material while being covered by two of the most involved press corps, instead lauding or chastising its own play.
Vigneault and Flyers bench boss Craig Berube are two of the sport’s most even-keeled post-game quotes. The only Patrick “Balls on the Table” Roy in either of them came when Berube pulled his goalie behind by two goals with about three minutes left on Sunday.
Maybe it’s OK for the sport to have two of its marquee franchises play nice, as the sweaters will sell the series on their own. Maybe it’s better to watch two proud organizations play fair instead reducing it to WWE-style fighting, spearing and tomfoolery.
But having watched about every 2014 playoff game thus far, the intensity level is far greater in the Western Conference series — and even in Columbus-Pittsburgh — than with Rangers-Flyers.
And that fact is disappointing, particularly as a neutral party who grew up glued to this rivalry. Former Flyers coach Bob McCammon once called the undersized Rangers “Smurfs” during one of the epic 1980s Rangers-Flyers playoff series — they met seven times in nine seasons in that decade.
Each of these teams’ fan bases, buildings and rosters is capable of more venom.
Maybe we’ll see it in Tuesday’s Game 6. As the Flyers grow more desperate, they get feistier — particularly on home ice. Series typically get nastier the longer they go, and this could be the East’s longest.
But if the trend holds, and you allow yourself to get caught in the buildup, Game 6 might let you down.
