Rangers still have fight, back in series against Hurricanes
NEW YORK » What would a New York Rangers home playoff game be without a little controversy mixed in?
The Blueshirts took a first period lead and never looked back in a 3-1 win over the Carolina Hurricanes in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Second Round at Madison Square Garden on Sunday.
Unlike some previous postseason games in Manhattan this year, there was no issue with the result itself — no overturned goal that could have prevented triple overtime, no helmet rule that the visiting team claims may have ultimately ended their season — with the focus shifting to events that unfolded immediately after the final whistle was blown.
Instead of officiating drama, there was just some good ol’ fashioned hatred, ignited by a sequence after the whistle in which Carolina Hurricanes forward Max Domi — son of former Rangers enforcer Tie Domi — went after New York defenseman Ryan Lindgren, which set off some fireworks that had everyone talking after the game, most notably Rangers head coach Gerard Gallant.
“I wasn’t happy with the bull(excrement) at the end of the game that they initiated,” Gallant said. “We didn’t do that when the games were close. They put their guys on, that’s fine. If they want to play like that, we’ve got the guys that can match that. I don’t like it at the end of a game. The game is over. We’ve still got four games to go with those guys. They’re not sending any message. We’ve got the guy that can handle all their guys if we want to. We didn’t do it like that. Domi
took a cheap shot at our defenseman. You’ve got a lot memory in this, you think about things, and like I said, it might be on the other foot someday.”
Gallant didn’t hold back in his post-game press conference, and certainly didn’t from his perch on the bench either, where ESPN cameras appeared to, if the Internet’s finest lip-readers
can be trusted, told Hurricanes defenseman Tony DeAngelo — himself a former Ranger who had a very memorable and publicized departure from the club — to “shut the (heck) up” and “stop yapping.”
Neither Lindgren nor Domi or DeAngelo were made available after the game, leaving Hurricanes head coach Rod
Brind’Amour to speak on an altercation that, apparently, he had yet to actually see for himself.
“I didn’t really see what happened, so I can’t even comment on it,” he said.
When asked if he had any issue with Gallant going back-and-forth with one of his players, he offered a similar answer.
“I didn’t catch any of
that, so I can’t comment on it,” he said.
The issues after the final whistle took away from a pretty entertaining game that occurred before it, one in which Rangers netminder Igor Shesterkin delivered another gem of a performance, stopping 43 of 44 shots to get them to within 2-1 in the best-ofseven series.
Carolina threw anything and everything on net at the Hart Trophy finalist, but their best road game of the postseason so far still didn’t result in a win.
“They all kind of suck if you don’t win,” Brind’Amour said. “We definitely had our opportunities to win. It felt good the way we were going, we just couldn’t get pucks in the net.”