Rangers appear to be in trouble
There was some mild spearing and alleged groin-punching (initiated by Rangers captain Ryan Callahan, the alleged groin-puncher, with New Jersey's Ilya Kovalchuk, the spearer, who said "This is hockey, not chess. So we're allowed to punch each other. ") There was a bit of a rampage by Rangers forward Mike Rupp, a soft-spoken bear of a man, who was called for roughing on Peter Harrold, then punched former teammate Martin Brodeur in the chest and head on the way to throwing around the 6-foot-3, 220-pound Steve Bernier like he was a mannequin.
"I just responded in that moment," Rupp said. "That was that."
And then, finally, Rangers coach John Tortorella and Jersey coach Pete DeBoer stood and turned the air blue for a few seconds - not a lot of complete sentences, and not a lot of printable material, was the word on the conversation - and it was clear that the rivalry between these teams, largely suppressed for the first three games, still exits.
"I think emotion takes over," DeBoer said.
"The longer you play against a team, the more you get emotions playing against them - you learn to hate them or love them, or whatever it might be," Ndamukong Suh Jerseys
said Rangers goaltender Henrik Lundqvist.
Love does seem unlikely, but we have two or three games to find out. But for the Rangers, it is more about this: for everyone saying that the late histrionics mean that the Rangers lost their cool or were frustrated, or that they could hurt them, that is a little back-asswards. The Rangers only took liberties because the score was a little out of control, and therefore taking liberties could not hurt them. They were frustrated because for four games the Devils have started games better, and finally
the Rangers is not the frustration; it is the reason for the frustration.">managed to play a dominant contest on the scoreboard. The danger here for the Rangers is not the frustration; it is the reason for the frustration.
The Rangers are playing this series on the heels of their skates. They are going through long stretches where they barely even attempt to create offence, in much the same way a drowning man barely attempts to water-ski. New York has not scored more than three goals in their last 17 games, and other than rookie forward Chris Kreider, none of New York's top-six forwards has scored a non-empty-net goal in the series. When Tortorella was asked what he could do to get his struggling forwards going, he gave his most insightful one-word answer of the series: "Pray."
"I don't know what else to tell you," Tortorella said. "We're going to keep on trying to play, pray, and hopefully something good happens to them."
Tortorella appears to be mashing buttons as fast as he can find them. He squawked about dives and alleged dirty hits after Game 3, and the subject of one of those alleged dirty hits, defenceman Anton Stralman, said he could not remember the hit in question . Tortorella sent out his rougher blueshirts, Rupp and Stu Bickel, after a timeout, exchanged words with DeBoer, and then dropped his one-word answer protocol after the loss, answering the media's questions with such relative patience and expansiveness that it seemed like he was determined to lower the temperature. Tuesday Tortorella yanked his team off the ice abruptly, and implied it was because they were having such a great practice.
And even as he invokes the power of prayer - my friend Sean McIndoe joked that the conversation would go along the lines of, "Are you there God? It's me, Joh-" "NO" - Tortorella invoked his confidence in his team's ability to bounce back, again. He is trying to figure something out beyond simply hoping that Lundqvist swells beyond his already extravagant human proportions, and hoping for a bounce. There may yet be a better Rangers team in there somewhere. He only needs to find it twice .