This time, there was no need for hysterics or histrionics when it ended. There will be no forever call, which is just as well: Mount Vancouver doesn’t await them this time; it’ll either be the glitz of the L.A. canyons or the grime of the Chicago stockyards.
Doesn’t matter.
This matters:
The Rangers are going to the Stanley Cup final, and now they can spend the next few days hoping the Blackhawks and the Kings play five or six overtimes in Game 6 of their Western Conference final, then five or six more in Game 7. Get those legs weary and those lungs burning. Clobber each other a little bit. Or a lot.
And whenever they’re done beating each other up and knocking each other down, the Rangers will be there waiting for them, this 1-0 gem tucked away forever, their first appearance in the Cup final in 20 years secure. And we all remember what happened that time.
“This,” Ryan McDonagh said, “is a team of believers.”
They won’t be favored to finish the script, but who cares about that? They weren’t supposed to beat the Penguins, either, certainly not when they’d spotted them a 3-1 lead; they beat the Penguins anyway. They weren’t supposed to beat the Canadiens, not with that 24-Cup history and all those lurking, loitering ghosts.
They beat the Canadiens anyway.
So they get one more chapter to write, one more hill to climb, baby. They had talked about treating this Game 6 as a Game 7, being every bit as urgent as the Canadiens even if they didn’t have extinction lurking on the other side of a loss the way Montreal did. And they did that. They got 10 of the first 11 shot attempts. Early in the third, it was 26-13. There were boatloads of chances.
And then one critical tic-tac-toe play: McDonagh to Brian Boyle to Dominic Moore, a minute and 53 seconds from the end of the second period. That’s what finally cracked the ice, seemed to crack the Canadiens’ spirit, too, because it was pretty clear they’d be hard-pressed to buy one goal against Henrik Lundqvist, sniffing his first Cup final, let alone two.
“When we needed him most,” defenseman Marc Staal would say of the goaltender, “he was great.”
Moore? This time last year he was out of the NHL, mourning the death of his wife, Katie, to liver cancer. When he made the decision to play again, there was only one destination he dreamed of.
“I started my career here,” Moore said, wearing the Heisenberg the Rangers pass along to their heroes of the day, referring to the team that picked him with the 95th selection of the 2000 draft, out of Harvard. “And I wanted to be able to help that team do what we’re doing. Sometimes dreams do come true.”
Maybe it wasn’t as dramatic as Stephane Matteau’s forever goal of two decades ago, but that won’t matter a bit when Rangers take the ice at either Staples Center or United Center next Wednesday.
They already have overcome so much: two Game 7 gauntlets, that 1-3 hole to Pittsburgh, even that old stand-by, the Sports Illustrated cover jinx. Do you really believe the Kings or the Blackhawks frighten them now, even a little bit?
They have taken this city by storm, rendered baseball invisible, made the NBA playoffs feel like public-access specials. Who saw that coming? Best of all, they also have demonstrated themselves to be a likeable, lunchpail-able bunch, too.
And that has always played nicely in this town.
“Our group is never satisfied,” McDonagh said, “but when we’re playing well we can be awfully good.”
Yes, Matteau was in the house last night, along with so many other Rangers alumni from Brad Park to Alex Kovalev, and it was a one-goal game for most of the night, and there was certainly a little nervous energy abounding when the Canadiens, playing with alligator blood, kept the game from ever getting too far out of hand.
Those old heroes had come to Penn Plaza looking to extend a hand and lift a new wave of names — Lundqvist and St. Louis, Kreider and Richards, Boyle and Nash and Zuccarello — to the platform with them. And at precisely 10:39 p.m., that’s where this fresh batch of Rangers went.
Onto the shelf. Into the finals. One more hill to climb, baby.