Rangers knot series at 2 games apiece with 4-1 win

This was as close to a laugher as we have had in this series as the New York Rangers never trailed in a 4-1 win at Madison Square Garden.  They have come back from a 0-2 deficit to tie the Carolina Hurricanes in their second round playoff series.  That means they will play at least one more game this season at the Garden.

The teams followed the script with all the games won by the home team in this series.  In fact, the Hurricanes are yet to win on the road this postseason, winning all six home games and losing all five road games.  Of course, for the Rangers to win this series, they have to break that streak.

The expected confrontation between Ryan Reaves and Max Domi didn’t happen until the last 10 seconds of the game, and at that it was relatively uneventful.

But it was Max Domi who was involved in a key play in the game. At 11:38, Jacob Trouba laid a big hit on Domi that turned the tide for the Blueshirts and gave them the  impetus for the win.   After Jacob Trouba laid out Domi with a big hit, he was attacked by Steven Lorentz who ended up with the instigator penalty and a misconduct.  The Rangers scored on the subsequent power play and never trailed.

Coach Gerard Gallant talked about how important it was. “That was a big hit by Troubs.  He steps up at the blue line and obviously it was a big part of the game. Good, clean hard hit, they stepped up and got an instigator penalty and we scored, capitalized on it.  It was big for us.”

Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour actually didn’t complain about the instigator penalty saying “I know our guy comes in after the hit. I think they’re trying to do a job on that. If it’s a good hit, you shouldn’t come in.  He got cross checked pretty good in the face when he comes in.  It’s over.”

Adam Fox talked about it as well. “Trouba’s kind of done that all year. I don’t know if we needed a jolt to get going, but he got everyone going, defended himself and got us a power play and we scored there. It’s a big turning point in the game for sure.”

 Close to a 60 minute effort

Coach Gallant agreed that this was as good as effort as they have had all season.  He did say that the team sat back after getting ahead 3-0 and focused on protecting the lead, something he does not want to see.   With the Rangers on their heels a bit and back to the dump and defend play that hurt them in Game One, Gallant called Andrew Copp’s goal to restore the three goal lead “huge.”

All through the series he has emphasized that either team could have won any of the games including this one.   The very fact that the games were so close was one reason why the Blueshirts were never in danger of being out of the picture.  As Ryan Lindgren said about losing the first two games,  “We were down but we were never out. We come back here, feed off our crowd and get two big wins.”