Heart palpitations, all the way to back to Washington.
These calm and cool Rangers, they always had this one in the bag, right? The one when the end of their season was less than two minutes away? The one when overtime teetered, and wobbled, and finally allowed the Garden to breathe, and then erupt, with the captain in the middle of melee?
“It’s a good sign for us that we found a way to win this game under immense pressure,” Ryan McDonagh said after his winner at 9:37 of overtime gave the Rangers a 2-1 Game 5 victory over the Capitals on Friday night, sending this second-round playoff series to Game 6 in Washington on Sunday night with the Caps still leading the best-of-seven, 3-2.
When they get there, the pressure will be squarely on Alex Ovechkin and company, who held a 1-0 lead until there was just 1:41 left in regulation, and Chris Kreider scored a goal that miraculously pulled the Rangers’ season back off the ledge.
“There’s a lot of pressure for them,” goalie Henrik Lundqvist said. “I know for sure they don’t want to come back here for another game. So we’ll try to use that to our advantage and go out and try to play our best game of the series, put a lot of pressure on them, and try to come back here and play [Game 7] in front of our fans.”
Most of the night, it was shaping up to be a fitting way for the Blueshirts to be bounced. They had a ton of chances, eventually peppering outstanding goalie Braden Holtby with 43 shots. But in the waning minutes of the third period, the Capitals were still holding a 1-0 lead off a third-period breakaway goal from Curtis Glencross.
It seemed as if the Rangers were going to watch their scoring drought take them right into the summer, and after the clock dipped below two minutes, Lundqvist started for the bench. Derek Stepan made a quick little drop pass to Kreider at the top of the left circle, and he fired a snap shot passed Holtby’s glove, letting out a primal scream that was mute under the din of 18,006.
“I think we were confident that it was going to break eventually — and obviously, it broke pretty late,” Kreider said of his goal, just the second for the Blueshirts in a span of 192:12. “Just happy to be playing more hockey.”
It was Glencross who then made the fatal mistake in overtime, turning the puck over to Jesper Fast on an ill-advised pass in the neutral zone. Fast found Stepan on a great cross-ice feed, and Stepan showed patience with a pump-fake, leaving it on a tee for McDonagh.
“Obviously we know the building is going to get loud, and then tension is rising, but at the same time, you’ve got to be able to make plays and have poise with the puck,” McDonagh said. “I’m glad that we get to continue here and we’ve got another opportunity.”
Yes, the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Rangers are still alive, still breathing to fight another day. And they have done this before, just last season when they crawled out of a similar 3-1 hole in the same round of the playoffs to beat the Penguins en route to the Stanley Cup final.
“There is a lot of resolve, a lot of character in the room,” Kreider said. “It speaks to leadership.”
It was clear from coach Alain Vigneault that he wanted to be extra aggressive in this game, with his defensemen joining the rush and pinching with regularity. It cost the Rangers when Keith Yandle tried to keep a puck in and ended up running into fellow blue liner Kevin Klein, the two falling down and allowing Glencross the chance for the breakaway.
But they needed to find a way to beat Holtby, and they stuck to their game plan.
Now they’re flying high with confidence and emotion heading back to the nation’s capital, knowing the pressure has returned to the Capitals. Knowing they have done this before.
“At the end of the day, that’s it, we’re still breathing,” Vigneault said. “We’re going to go into Washington on Sunday and give it our best shot.”