Brassard raises game when it matters
NEW YORK — For years, the only way Derick Brassard could get into the playoffs was by purchasing a ticket.
It was all a little embarrassing. He’d put on dark sunglasses and a baseball hat and sit in the crowd with the other fans, praying he was not recognized as he watched two random teams play. He could have watched the games on TV. But Brassard had to be there, had to see what he was missing.
“When he was in Columbus, he would call me and say, ‘Can you get me tickets to see the Montreal Canadiens’,” said Brassard’s agent, Allan Walsh. “He wanted to go into the building. He wanted to feel the atmosphere and take it all in.”
He missed the playoffs for five straight seasons after being drafted by the Blue Jackets in 2006 and making the team in 2007, but Brassard no longer has to buy his way into the post-season. Now with the New York Rangers, he has qualified for the playoffs in three consecutive years. And he is making the most of the experience.
Heading into Sunday night’s Game 5 against the Tampa Bay Lightning, Brassard has six goals and 11 points in 16 games. Since arriving in New York in a 2013 trade-deadline deal, he has scored a team-leading 35 points in 51 post-season games.
He and Mark Messier are the only players in Rangers history to record 10 or more points in three straight playoffs.
After setting career highs in goals (19) and points (60) in the regular season, Brassard is once again making a name for himself when the games matter most. Brassard led the Rangers with 12 points in 12 games in the 2013 playoffs and had six goals and 12 points in last year’s run to the Cup final.
In the last three years, he has 10 more playoff points than Rick Nash.
“I like to play with emotion and I think playoffs are just about that,” Brassard said. “You have to step up at this time of the year. I’m just really enjoying the moment of being in the playoffs and having a chance to win the Cup.”
These last three years have been about capitalizing on an opportunity that Brassard had waited a long time for. A sixth-overall pick by the Blue Jackets in 2006 — he was selected after Erik Johnson, Jordan Staal, Jonathan Toews, Nicklas Backstrom and Phil Kessel — it appeared that Brassard would join Nikita Filatov, Nikolai Zherdev and Gilbert Brule as yet another failed first-rounder for Columbus.
As former Blue Jackets GM Doug McLean told the Wall Street Journal in 2013, “He looked like he was ready to take off and he just died for two or three years.”
The trade that sent Brassard to New York in a sixplayer deal involving Marian Gaborik brought the 27-yearold back from the dead, so to speak. Brassard recorded his first four-point game with the Rangers, but he really came alive when the playoffs arrived.
“He’s definitely more confident,” said Lightning defenceman Anton Stralman, who played with Brassard in Columbus as well as in New York. “I would say he’s grown a lot here in the last few years in New York and become a complete centreman.”
Ask Martin St. Louis what he knew about Brassard before becoming his teammate and the 39-year-old Rangers forward smiles.
“I knew he was French,” he said. “I mean, he’s got a lot of skill, but that’s about it.” And now? “He’s hungry,” said St. Louis. “That hunger, you can see how he gets better every week. As the league gets better, you’ve got to get better. He does that. He elevates his game.”
Playing on a line with Nash and St. Louis — and recently with Nash and J.T. Miller — for most of the playoffs, it’s easy to overlook Brassard. He is 6-foot-1, but he’s not particularly big. He doesn’t skate particularly fast and is not particularly flashy with the puck.
But, as Stralman said, “He’s one of those guys that always seems to get the puck, even though it doesn’t seem likely.”
In the first two rounds, when Nash and St. Louis were not scoring, Brassard had four goals and eight points in 12 games. Since then, he has played such a strong two-way game that the Lightning moved Stamkos to the wing in order to free him up.
“There’s more to the game than just goals and assists,” St. Louis said.
“You have to be able to play 200 feet, because you’re playing against top guys too. There’s a defensive awareness that you need. And he has that.”
The other day, a police officer pulled Brassard over on his way to a playoff game because his new car was missing a front licence plate. He should have received a ticket.
But unlike those days when he was dressing incognito, Brassard was happy to be recognized.