NEW YORK — There were bodies strewn across the ice, bodies tussling in the corner, bodies in the penalty box with more bodies on the way. The Garden faithful were on top of their chairs and at the top of their lungs, demanding goals and blood in equal measure. Jacob Trouba and, of all people, Andrei Svechnikov, were being ushered to the box for matching roughing minors.
One official was skating aimlessly around the neutral zone, holding out a blue helmet like a Times Square busker looking for spare change, trying to find its owner.
At this point of the game, Tony DeAngelo and Matt Rempe already had both been penalized for Tony DeAngelo-ing and Matt Rempe-ing, respectively. There already had been a brutal boarding of Seth Jarvis by Chris Kreider and a follow-up hit by Trouba as Jarvis was still crumpling to the ice. DeAngelo had thrown his shoulder directly into the face of Will Cuylle. Nearly every whistle had led to a skirmish, every hit a response, every official flailing to control it all.
The series was 11 minutes and 13 seconds old.
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The second round can be the most mentally difficult of the Stanley Cup playoffs. The unbridled excitement of the first round has worn off, and the actual awarding of the Cup is still up to six weeks away — a daunting, sobering thought. Game 1 of Round 2 is often a low-pace, low-event grind, a leisurely dipping of the toe into the water, especially for two teams that cruised through quick first-round wins and had several days off in between.
Not this one.
There was no easing into this one, a wild and raucous and ultimately harrowing 4-3 victory for the New York Rangers. No feeling-out process. The Rangers and the Carolina Hurricanes know each other well, and know themselves well. Most of all, they know their time very well might be now, so there’s no time to waste. There’s a desperation and an urgency in both of these teams that was evident in every hit, every rush, every goal celebration.
We can argue all day long (and we have) about which of these teams is the real favorite — the analytics and bettors heavily favor the Hurricanes, the old-school types and the actual standings side with the Rangers. It’s all irrelevant, of course, just fodder for podcasts and social media and barroom debates. The fact is, there is no clear favorite. These are the first and third-best teams in the entire league based on the regular season standings. That means both fancy themselves legit Stanley Cup contenders, and both are right to do so.
But that fury we saw on the ice in Game 1 is fueled in part by the reality that both teams face — they need to make their run this year, now, right now, because tomorrow is anything but promised.
Carolina has been an analytics darling and a regular-season powerhouse for four years now. They’re so fast, so ferocious on the forecheck. They play the way every coach wishes their team played — with structure and skill, daring and defense. They’re incredibly frustrating to play against. But this is their fourth straight year as a legitimate Stanley Cup contender, and they haven’t even won a conference final game since they took the 2006 title. Ah, but this year is supposed to be different. The knock on the Canes is that they never quite had the finishers up front, so general manager Don Waddell broke his no-rental rule and went out and added Jake Guentzel and Evgeny Kuznetsov at the trade deadline.
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And for good reason. Teuvo Teräväinen, Jordan Martinook, Brady Skjei and Brett Pesce are all unrestricted free agents this summer, as, of course, is Guentzel. Carolina will have the cap flexibility to restock, but for this group, which has had so much success and still has so much to prove, this could be the last chance. It’s reminiscent of the 2010 Chicago Blackhawks, who knew a salary-cap reckoning was coming (in all, 11 players found new teams that summer) and used it as a rallying cry as they made their championship run.
“This team was one and done,” Brent Sopel, a defenseman for that Blackhawks team on an expiring contract, once told me. “This team was going to get exploded. … It was something we couldn’t control. But we knew we had to win a Stanley Cup now. That was all we could control.”
Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour — himself still without a contract for next season — is a master motivator. Is he playing up that urgency to juice up his team?
No need.
“I don’t build it up, you don’t need to,” he said. “Everybody understands. You talk about urgency — we’re pretty much past that. We understand what an opportunity it is, and we understand how hard this can be. But we’re happy to be in this situation.”
Sure. Better to be under that kind of pressure than to be relaxing in Cabo right now, right? But that pressure exists. It’s real, and it’s weighty. The Rangers know it well, too.
We can start with the obvious weight of history. Mike Richter, Adam Graves, Stephane Matteau and Glenn Anderson were in attendance for Game 1, shaking hands and signing autographs and drawing huge cheers after being shown on the big screen. The 1994 Rangers can dine out on that championship forever. That’s because it’s the only one this Original Six franchise has in the last 84 years. Of course, more than half of this team wasn’t even born when Mark Messier took the silver chalice from Gary Bettman, shaking with glee.
But plenty of the big names were. Chris Kreider is 33, Artemi Panarin is 32, Mika Zibanejad is 31, Vincent Trocheck and Jacob Trouba are 30. The Rangers are in the middle of their championship window, yes, but their window could close faster than most do in the youth-oriented NHL. The aging curve comes for everybody.
This Rangers team has it all — high-end talent up front including a perennial MVP candidate in Panarin, a true No. 1 defenseman in Adam Fox, depth and physicality throughout the lineup, and one of the best goalies in the world in Igor Shesterkin. They didn’t win the Presidents’ Trophy by accident. Their much-ballyhooed rebuild was completed in a flash by NHL standards, as New York went right to the Eastern Conference final two years ago. A hard-fought, seven-game, first-round loss to the rival New Jersey Devils was a kick in the gut, but was nothing to be ashamed of.
But this year’s Rangers are different. They’re better. They’re built for playoff success. And they have to win sooner than later. They know that. Carolina does, too.
That’s how you get two teams running each other over mere seconds into a long playoff series. Familiarity breeds contempt, but so does urgency. So does desperation. And those will only ratchet up higher as the season goes along, the grudges and pressures building concurrently.
Trocheck, who had a goal and an assist Sunday night, downplayed it all, saying every game of every series he’s ever played has been “balls to the wall,” so this one was no different. But it was. But it is.
The Rangers have to be feeling pretty good after Game 1. Worried about the Rangers’ five-on-five play? Doesn’t matter much when they score two power-play goals in 23 seconds of power-play time, while shutting down the dynamic Canes power play with surprising ease and holding them to just 25 shots on goal in total. But New York knows better than to think it’s going to get easier from here.
The Hurricanes have to be feeling awfully frustrated after Game 1. They hit a couple posts early on, botched a few scoring chances, and there are always concerns that goalie Frederik Andersen — so brilliant down the stretch after returning from a blood-clotting issue — could stumble and lose the net to rookie Pyotr Kochetkov. But this is their ninth series in four years; they understand the ebbs and flows of playoff hockey. They can handle the emotional swings. And discipline and special teams aside, Brind’Amour actually was pretty happy with his team’s effort.
It was a fast, physical, ferocious game, the series going from zero to 60 in one shift. It looked — and felt, and sounded — like two teams at the height of their powers going at it, a true clash of the titans. It was violent, it was chaotic, it was playoff hockey. The good stuff.
And it’s only Round 2. It’s only Game 1. Better take that helmet from the ref; you’re going to need it.
(Top photo of Tony DeAngelo hitting Will Cuylle: Jared Silber / NHLI via Getty Images)
