Ryan Callahan continued to struggle having an impact on the Eastern Conference final, despite what his coach, Jon Cooper, had predicted before Game 5.
“I’m glad you brought that question up because probably tonight’s the night he’s going to score,” Cooper said Sunday morning, hours before his team won 2-0 without a goal from Callahan and took a 3-2 series lead with a chance to eliminate the Rangers in Game 6 Tuesday in Tampa.
“Because he does that on big stages,” Cooper had said about the former Rangers captain, “and he’s probably going to do it in the building that he grew up [in] as a hockey player.”
Callahan broke in with the Rangers in the 2006-07 season, and left when he was traded at the March 2014 deadline after a contract impasse. He finished Game 5 with one shot in two attempts, and four hits over 14:25. He has no goals and three assists in the first 17 games of the postseason.
Callahan, who was not available to the media after the game, had to laugh at the pseudo-guarantee when it was brought up to him in the morning.
“Yeah, that’s good,” he said. “I’ll take it.”
Asked if Cooper knew something everyone else didn’t, Callahan again smiled. “Hope so,” he said.
Not so much.
Callahan, 30, had an emergency appendectomy on May 11, and after missing Game 6 of the second-round series against the Canadiens, played in Game 1 of the East semifinal on the afternoon of May 16. He said before Game 5 Sunday there are “no issues” and “everything feels good” physically.
As for extra motivation from being back at the Garden, as Cooper had alluded to, the face of the former Black-and-Blueshirts was more focused on being one step away from playing for the Stanley Cup rather than back on his old stomping grounds.
“I think in any situation, you want to step up,” Callahan said. “Being the conference finals, no matter where you are, you want to step up and be helpful and contribute. Being at MSG, I don’t know if that changes it too much right now. When I first came in, the first, second game in here during the [regular] season, that was big,” Callahan said. “I had a little bit of a chip on my shoulder.
“But now it’s the conference final. I don’t need an extra emotion or energy or a reason to play well. It should just be trying to make it to the Stanley Cup final is reason enough.”
Callahan has not only been absent from the scoresheet, but he hasn’t done much in this series to be noticeable at all, besides hitting the crossbar with 10:10 left in the second period of Game 4.
“When I speak with him, I don’t judge him on, ‘Well, he hasn’t scored a goal in this series,’ ” Cooper said. “Ryan Callahan brings so much to our team in the locker room, on the ice, his physical play. … He just wears his heart on his sleeve.”
Now he wears a promise from his coach that remains unfulfilled.