When John Tortorella saw the Devils’ starting lineup before Monday night’s clash at the Garden, the Rangers coach received the message from Peter DeBoer and the cross-river rivals loud and clear — it was time to spill the bad blood.
“We were pretty fired up — he got us going pretty good in here,” Henrik Lundqvist said of Tortorella’s pregame speech prior to a 4-2 Rangers win that clinched a playoff berth. “When Torts saw their starting lineup, he changed a little bit of our starting lineup. We knew what was coming, and it just set the tone for this game.”
PHOTOS: RANGERS WIN MAIN EVENT & UNDERCARD
Tortorella was caught on camera cursing out DeBoer across the benches before the opening faceoff. At the puckdrop, six players engaged in three simultaneous fights, with Rangers rookie Stu Bickel opening a huge gash on Ryan Carter’s nose that caused a delay as arena workers scraped blood from the ice.
Mike Rupp took on Eric Boulton and Brandon Prust dueled with Cam Janssen.
“It just feels like you’re fighting for territory,” Rupp said of the Ranger-Devil rivalry.
The coaches’ war of words spilled into the postgame. DeBoer, who said Sunday he thinks “there’s a genuine dislike” between the teams, took exception to Tortorella’s reprimand for starting his brawlers.
“I guess, in John’s world you can come into our building and start your tough guys, but we can’t do the same here,” the Devils coach said, referring to Tortorella starting Rupp and Prust in the teams’ first meeting of the season, Dec. 20 in Newark. In that game, Rupp and Janssen scrapped three seconds in. “He either has short-term memory loss or he’s a hypocrite. It’s one or the other.”
Tortorella said afterwards: “I do what I have to do with my team. I don’t coach his team, so it's none of my business.”
The frustrated Devils even left one of the locker stalls in the visiting team room damaged following the emotional contest.
In the hockey game that broke out following the fisticuffs, the line of Ryan Callahan, Brandon Dubinsky and Derek Stepan carried the Blueshirts (45-20-7, 97 points) at the start and the finish, snapping a two-game losing streak and improving the Rangers’ conference lead over the Penguins to three points with 10 games to play, though idle Pittsburgh now has a game in hand.
Dubinsky opened the scoring 1:11 into the first period, and with a 3-2 lead and 1:10 to play, Derek Stepan redirected in Dubinsky’s shot off a Carl Hagelin forecheck just as a late power play expired. Callahan had two assists and drew the penalty on Jacob Josefson that gave New York the late man advantage.
Dan Girardi snuck a wrist shot past Martin Brodeur in the second period. Patrik Elias got the Devils on the scoreboard 4:30 later.
Mats Zuccarello gave the Rangers a 3-1 lead on the power play at 7:33 of the second period. It was his second goal in as many games and snapped an 0-for-9 skid on the man advantage.
A softee from Petr Sykora closed the scoring for the Devils (41-27-5, 87 points).
All Dubinsky could talk about afterward, though, was Bickel, Rupp and Prust.
“We have three tough customers in here, and it takes a lot of (guts) to do that, especially against those guys,” Dubinsky said. “It was nice to score a goal, but I’m not going to take any credit from them for how we started that game.”
This is the earliest the Rangers have clinched a playoff berth since the 1991-92 season, when they clinched on March 8. They will head to the playoffs for the second time in Tortorella's three full seasons as coach, but this time, they've punched their ticket early, as opposed to scratching and clawing until the final days of the regular season.
“I like it this way,” Lundqvist said. “Now we can go over details of our game more than just look at points. There’s no stress, no panic."
2 weeks ago
No comments:
Post a Comment