Devils coach Pete DeBoer said Tuesday that his war of words with Rangers coach John Tortorella was the result of on-ice actions in Game 4 of the Battle of the Hudson Monday.
“Emotion takes over. I took offense at what happened on the ice, and that was my outlet, right or wrong,” DeBoer said.
In the third period of the Devils’ 4-1 victory that squared the series 2-2, ex-Devil Mike Rupp punched unsuspecting goalie Martin Brodeur, which led to the heated exchange between the coaches.
Also, the Rangers’ Stu Bickel crosschecked Ryan Carter across the neck, Devils forward Ilya Kovalchuk also speared Ryan Callahan.
“I don’t anticipate any more of that,” DeBoer said. “I think the stakes are too high going forward here for any of that stuff to show up.
“But you never know.”
His players seem to have enjoyed the show.
“I think it’s great to see when your coach is involved in that and cares like that,” captain Zach Parise said. “I think he’s done a great job throughout the whole series keeping his cool. And when things have gone good or bad, he’s always done a really good job of keeping everything even keel.
“I don’t know if something just happened to push him over the edge last night. That’s fine with us. We know that he cares about us and cares about the team.”
Travis Zajac, who scored the eventual winner, said the players take heart from DeBoer’s actions.
“He’s an emotional guy, he wants to win, just like us, and it rubs off. It rubs off on us,” Zajac said. “And to see how much he cares about the players and his team and about us having success makes us feel good.”
Zajac admitted that feelings cross the line to hate in this rivalry.
“For me it was the first year,” Zajac said. “You have your leaders like Marty and Patty [Elias] and those guys and see how they compete against that team.
“It makes it easy to get involved and hate that team.”