Montreal Canadiens at New York Rangers – NYR wins 3-2 (OT), NYR leads series 3-1
The big news before the game even started would be that the Rangers would be without Derek Stepan for at least this game. Stepan has 11 points so far these playoffs for the Rangers even though his frequent line mate Rick Nash had zero goals through the first two rounds. It was a loss to the Rangers, though they would welcome back Derick Brassard to help his team out. This would be a game of adjustments for New York, no more so than Dominic Moore, who would center Nash and Chris Kreider.
Dustin Tokarski would likely have to play an excellent game for Montreal as he had to steal Game 3 for the Habs. Sporting a .925 save percentage since taking over for an injured Carey Price in Game 2. New York had a good habit of pinning the Canadiens in their zone at several points in this series and if Montreal wanted to go home with a tied series, Tokarski would have to make several key saves for this team tonight.
With Stepan being out for the Rangers, it provided a good opportunity for veterans like Tomas Plekanec and Brian Gionta to step up and contribute in this series. Plekanec was a 20-goal scorer for Montreal in the regular season but hasn’t scored since Game 3 of the Boston series; Gionta had 18 goals and hadn’t scored since the first game of the playoffs. With just three assists between them in the last five games, it was time for these veterans to get on the score sheet with a number-1 centre is missing from the other team.
The story in this one for the Rangers ended up being their line of Carl Hagelin, Brad Richards, and Martin St. Louis. The team’s first goal was scored by Hagelin as he was sent in all lone on a short-handed breakaway off a very nice pass from Brian Boyle. The team’s third and game-winning goal came off the stick of Martin St. Louis. A fumbled play at the Montreal blue line in overtime left St. Louis all lone down low on Tokarski after a nice find by Richards. The talented veteran went short-side over the shoulder to give his team a commanding three-to-one series lead.
Those two goals, one of them while with on a man disadvantage, didn’t really tell the whole story for the Richards line here. Martin St. Louis had found himself one-on-one with Tokarski a few times in this game, each of them turned aside by the rookie netminder. While the line finished just around 50-percent possession for the game (Richards a little lower), St. Louis managed to find a few good scoring opportunities and seemed destined for the game-winner.
That line picked on the Montreal pairing of Alexei Emelin and Andrei Markov quite a bit. It was Markov who was on the ice and was slow to turn back on the Hagelin short-handed breakaway. It was Markov who was also on the ice with Emelin that left St. Louis by himself for the game-winner. Despite Markov being on the ice for under 45-percent of total ice time for either St. Louis or Hagelin, he was burned a couple times by them. The speed was a lot for the aging defenseman to handle and he showed a lot of frustration towards the Rangers players at times during the game.
All told, this was probably Montreal’s best effort of the series. Tokarski played well again and gave them the chance to win it, but again on this night, the depth and the speed of the Rangers forwards proved to be the difference.
The aggressive Rangers penalty kill continued their excellent play, holding Montreal to just one goal on eight chances in this game, including one in overtime. The Rangers penalty killers have killed 16 of 17 chances this series, a superb 94.1-percent in the four games.
