Where to start? The brilliance of Henrik Lundqvist? The brilliance of Sean Aver? The joy of having a working power play? Uncle Daddy being shaky? There were so many subplots coming into this game that I was almost scared it would be over before it started. The Rangers have been playing pretty well lately, but haven’t been getting the results they wanted, and tonight they had to play against the Atlantic division leading Devils, who came into the game having just acquired one of the best players in the game, Ilya Kovalchuk.
I expected it to be an interesting game, but I didn’t expect it to be so thoroughly enjoyable to watch. Generally Rangers-Devils games have really long boring stretches, but this one was pretty damn good from the drop of the puck. The Devils came out strong and basically forced Henrik Lundqvist to be the star attraction from moment one.
It certainly looked to me that the Devils had a set game plan. Shoot glove side. And really, you can’t blame them, if there is one area Henrik seems to be beatable, it’s high glove side. But today the Rangers goalie was flashing some leather, stopping both high, and low shots glove side. Henrik was tracking the puck better than he has been of late, and really stood head and shoulders above the rest of the players on the ice. In particular when compared to his counterpart, Uncle Daddy. Uncle Daddy did not look sharp, giving up a soft goal by Callahan, and giving Chris Drury a huge amount of net to shoot at on his goal. The Devils definitely had the bulk of the better play in this game, but this was not a game where Henrik Lundqvist stole 2 points for the Rangers. He was the #1 story, sure, but the Rangers played pretty damn well in front of their superstar goaltender, especially given the expected surge of energy the Devils would inevitably get by making such a lopsided trade for such a great player.
Speaking of Kovalchuk, he really did have a great game up until the final 2 minutes. He was outstanding on the rush, got quite a few quality scoring chances, and probably would have had a goal or 2 if Henrik wasn’t on top of his game. However at the end of the game Kovalchuk took a retarded penalty when falling for Sean Averys antics. That is what Avery is out there to do, to piss of Kovalchuk, and it worked. Kovalchuk was selfish and very stupid there, especially when you consider the Devils would end up getting a power play a short while afterwards. Think they could have used Kovalchuk for that PP with the game being close and them having 6 men on the ice? Had Avery not goaded Kovalchuk there, it wouldn’t surprise me if the Devils got 1 in the final minute to make this one close. As it stands, the Rangers picked up 2 crucial points, as their playoff positioning has become perilous, and these points have become basically must haves from here on out.