Quick Quiz, and one that has nothing to do with the Los Angeles netminder: How many goals did Mark Messier score in the 1994 playoffs? How about Adam Graves? How many points for Steve Larmer on the ride that ended in the Canyon of Heroes?
Exactly.
Who knows?
Who cares?
“It’s not about individual numbers when you’re playing for a winning team,” Rick Nash told The Post after the Rangers returned to the rink on Sunday following a couple of days off. “It’s about doing whatever you can to help the team.
“My personal experience is from the Olympics, where we [Canada] won the gold medal twice. Guys were put into different roles. [Sidney] Crosby scored how many goals? I don’t know,” No. 61 said.
“Does it matter? Whatever you do, you need to be able to do something else if that’s what the team needs.
“That’s what I’m trying to do now; whatever the team needs from me.”
Nash did score three goals in the six-game Eastern Conference finals victory over the Canadiens after having been blanked over 14 games in the first two rounds. But the goals aren’t what stand out about his performance against Montreal. That instead would be the dogged and effective effort put forth by Nash away from the puck, checking through the neutral and defensive zones, his work on the penalty-kill unit.
Grunt work for the most part, the kind you don’t always get from high-profile, highly paid players but the kind the Rangers have gotten from Nash, whom coach Alain Vigneault entrusted with a pair of shifts worth 1:41 over the final 2:22 of Game 6 against Montreal while his team was protecting a 1-0 lead.
He is a first-line guy who is also on the first line of defense. A $7.8 million guy who puts in an honest day’s work wearing a blue collar and hard hat.
“I’d be lying if I said that there haven’t been times where I’ve been frustrated by not scoring, I definitely was,” Nash said. “But there’s a bigger picture than individual stats, and that’s wins and losses. At this point, that’s really all there is.
“For me, playing the defensive game is something I take a lot of pride in,” the winger said. “I’ve had that role playing for Canada where I was more of a defensive and checking guy. It’s lucky for me that I had Hitch as a coach in Columbus, because he’s the one that taught me how to play that way.
“It was a great education for me.”Whatever you do, you need to be able to do something else if that’s what the team needs.
- Rick Nash
That would be Hitch, as in Ken Hitchcock, currently the St. Louis coach who won the Stanley Cup behind the Dallas bench in 1999 and had Nash with the Blue Jackets from early in the 2006-07 season through late in 2009-10.
“I am so proud watching Rick play the way he has been for the Rangers during this run,” Hitchcock said by phone Sunday afternoon. “When I got [to Columbus], he was a player who so badly wanted to contribute to a winning team, not just to go out there and score some goals and lose the game.
“One of things he said to me was that all the money in the world didn’t matter unless he could be recognized for his role on a winning team, a championship team,” the coach said. “That’s what it always was for him; always about the team.”
Hitchcock said he benefited in communicating with Nash from his previous coaching experience in Dallas with Mike Modano, who adapted his explosive offensive style to incorporate defensive principles that became paramount during the Stars’ title run and the remainder of Modano’s career.
“I was lucky that I’d gone through it with Mo and was able to use that experience with Rick,” Hitchcock said. “It’s not about making an offensive player into a checker, it’s about changing a guy’s value system.
“What I would tell Mo and Rick was that the only way you can get the puck and create offense against good teams is to check and get it back,” said Hitchcock, an assistant coach on the three Canadian Olympic teams for which Nash played in 2006, 2010 and 2014. “You’ve got to be back on the puck if you want it; no good team you’re playing is going to give it you.
“Doing that changed Mo’s life and career. I threw Mo in Rick’s face so much I’m sure he got sick of it. But he bought in and so willingly and enthusiastically,” he said. “And you can see that he never loses sight of that value system.”
Nash is the original Low-Profile Kid in the ultimate High-Profile Town. He didn’t just wind up in New York by happenstance. When it was time for him to leave Columbus following 2011-12, he essentially engineered the trade to the Rangers by refusing to waive his no-move for any other team.
“That was not a surprise to me,” Hitchcock said. “Rick has always had a burning desire to be an impact player for an impact team in an impact city.
“And look at him now, having a huge impact in a positive way at the highest levels of the sport. I’m really proud of him.”