Tanner’s heart of Glass

MONTREAL — This was the goal of Tanner Glass’ life, a holy-cow backhand off a faceoff that beat Carey Price and gave the Rangers the one-goal lead they held onto throughout most of their 2-0 Game 1 win over Montreal.

“Scored the fifth goal of a 5-1 game at one point,” Glass said. “This is much bigger.”

Glass was included in the lineup to bring tenacity, and he did as much as he could in his eight minutes in all zones. These intense, physical affairs are why Glass is here, and he thrived.

“I think when we look at the intensity we played with tonight, I think that’s gonna have to be a calling card of ours as we go along here,” Glass said. “Happy with our Game 1 effort, but a lot of hockey ahead of us.” about that all the time. But other than that we were good teammates, good friends and still are to this day.”

Vigneault laughed when told of Julien’s comments and didn’t offer a playful rebuttal, but there was one moment that stood out during their days together.

“Claude can share as many secrets as he wants,” Vigneault said. “I don’t necessarily remember anything particular about those days other than Claude being a great teammate. He had a great fight one time against George McPhee, I remember it vividly, behind the net. Two guys just going at it for a long time. He was a real good teammate and a real good person.”

The two defensemen used to rack up a ton of penalty minutes. In 1981-82 Vigneault had 266 in in 64 games and the next season 189 in only 33 games, according to hockey-reference.com, earning call-ups to the St. Louis Blues each season. Julien had 134 penalty minutes their first year as teammates and 176 the next season.

“We were young and foolish and inexperienced and trying to prove ourselves,” Julien said. “We were both right ‘D’s. We were pretty similar players. To be honest, I think production-wise I had a few more points than he did, but he’s the one that they called up to St. Louis because his toughness was definitely there and he was a good defensive defenseman.”