Maple Leafs 4 – Rangers 2
They let it get away. The Rangers had something going last night against the Maple Leafs and they let it get away. But then, that’s what happens to teams that don’t quite understand what it takes to win. They lose their grasp of games there for the taking.
The Maple Leafs not only had registered an emotional victory in Ottawa Saturday while the Rangers rested at home, but also had back-up Trevor Kidd making his first NHL appearance of the year (after one AHL warmup) following rehab from summer shoulder surgery.
The Blueshirts, riding a 3-0-1 unbeaten streak into the Garden, came out as if they meant it, grabbing a 1-0 lead when Alex Kovalev’s rebound goal at 9:08 culminated a shift in which No. 27 and linemates Bobby Holik and Martin Rucinsky were simply relentless, driving to the net, pinning the Mats Sundin line in its own end for nearly a minute.
But that was the club’s zenith. After that, the Rangers’ part went pffft, for the most part. Yes, they stood up for one another; yes, the hitters hit, but the Blueshirts were never quite able to manufacture the energy with which they had played early; never again had the Maple Leafs on the run.
“The idea was to put the puck in deep and stay on them. That would have been a successful formula but we didn’t do that,” Holik said after the 4-2 defeat. “We have the tendency sometimes not to do what’s important.
“[The Maple Leafs] were somewhat passive. They waited for us to make mistakes, and we did. We played right into their hands. Believe me, the game was ours if we wanted it.”
What’s more, Glen Sather played right into Pat Quinn’s mitts. Inexplicably, Sather not only refused to ride the Holik line – which had been carrying the club for two weeks – but he switched off the Holik-Sundin matchup that was clearly to his own team’s benefit.
Somehow, after the opening score, the Holik line received one full shift the remainder of the first period, and had the least time among the team’s top three units through the second period. Somehow, coming off a television timeout with 8:32 to go in the first and all of the momentum in the world, Sather chose that time to go with Jamie Lundmark’s fourth line.
Twelve seconds later, the game was tied; changed for good, even if it was 2-2 late in the second before the Maple Leafs capitalized on a fairly bogus power play opportunity with 2:03 to go when Sundin banged home a rebound seconds after Sather had pulled Holik from the circle in favor of Mark Messier. The 4-2 goal came at 6:05 of third. The Rangers barely responded the rest of the way, unable to create against the opposition trap.
Mike Dunham was only average in nets, down early, kicking at the puck. This ordinarily would not be a critical issue, but sometime between Friday morning – when he said he had no problem with Sather’s selection of Jussi Markkanen for that night’s game in Pittsburgh – and the end of last night’s match, the goaltender became touchy about inquiries regarding the rotation.
“I’m not talking about that,” he said, cutting off a line of questioning about the situation.
One wonders what he might have said had he known that minutes earlier, Sather never used the words, “No. 1” to describe Dunham, and indeed said he hadn’t decided who’d be in nets for tomorrow night’s rematch in Toronto.
But then, had Sather ridden Holik’s line, the question most likely would not have been necessary to ask.