SUNRISE, Fla. — It is impossible to compare hockey from the ’70s to the game that’s being played now. But I have to say that the Panthers have taken a page out of the Broad Street Bullies’ playbook they and Zen master Fred Shero used to terrorize the league five decades ago.
They commit borderline, if not obvious, penalties on almost every shift the way the Flyers did. They overwhelm the referees the way the Flyers did. They dare the officials to send a parade to the box. The officials are not up to it.
Did you miss the entirely unprovoked Oliver Ekman-Larsson slash plus the entirely unprovoked Matthew Tkachuk high cross-check on Matt Rempe when No. 73 came off the bench to join the celebration after Alex Wennberg’s overtime winner that gave the Blueshirts a 2-1 edge in the series.
They flop and dive and embellish, the way Evan Rodrigues appeared to, writhing on the ice for up to two minutes after he was knocked down by Jacob Trouba’s forearm to his back after the captain fortuitously missed with an elbow after being beaten to the inside.
They flop and dive and embellish the way Sam Reinhart appeared to when he went down and stayed down long enough after contact from Trouba and Mika Zibanejad along the wall that the officials blew the play dead even as the Blueshirts were off on a shorthanded odd-man rush midway through the first period.
“They thought the player was injured to the point where they had to stop,” head coach Peter Laviolette said of the Kelly Sutherland-Eric Furlatt refereeing team.
He wasn’t injured.
I asked Laviolette if he was OK with that.
“I don’t think my opinion matters at this point,” he said. “[But] because it happened, I would like to see the play continue.”
I don’t blame the Puddy Tats or their head coach Paul Maurice for their approach. There’s a certain charm to it. They’re playing to their strength. They’re all in for it. The league is either not equipped to handle it or the league sees no evil.
Fine. Then it’s up to the Rangers to use whatever they have in their arsenal to counteract this. Of course they have to score on the power play, but PPGs won’t deter the Panthers from their appointed rounds. The Rangers are simply going to have to muscle up as best they can.
Introducing the captain of the ball club, as Marv would have said.
Trouba’s game-changing hits over the last couple of years have been delivered with his elbow tucked in. But he’s become prone to sticking out his elbow as a defensive maneuver, I guess, when he’s beaten. It’s not an effective move by any means, it is dangerous and if the captain gets someone in the head, Trouba will be down for multiple games.
He did not connect Sunday (and was fined $5,000). Indeed, when someone asked Trouba about the “elbow,” he immediately said, “forearm.”
The uproar caused by the incident was unhinged. Where was the commensurate outcry when Dmitry Kulikov attempted to behead Wennberg during the first period of Game 2?
“Listen, we need that physical presence. That’s something that [Trouba] brings and he brings it all the time,” Laviolette said. “We’re in a physical series so we need guys playing hard, playing physical. He’s somebody we can count on to do that.
“There’s something I don’t necessarily agree with [from Game 2] that he went to the box on, but it is what it is. From what he brings to the team with his physical presence our group needs that.”
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This isn’t merely a physical series. The Rangers are trying to get through a gauntlet here against a pack of carnivores. You can say all you want that the Panthers’ overwhelming shot-attempts advantage is somehow deceiving, but there is no denying that the Blueshirts are being pounded in their own end when they can’t get out.
The back end are absorbing licks. That includes Adam Fox, who appears to be wearing down by the day, playing on a leg that’s been damaged since he took a leg-on-leg hit from Nick Jensen in Game 4 of the Washington series. Zibanejad has already been through the wringer in battling against bigger, more physical opponents.
The Rangers are two victories away from the final but they are six victories away from the Cup. After 30 years, after one-for-eighty-four, the magic number is six and not two. So I asked Laviolette whether the big picture can take precedence over the club’s next-game mentality when making out the lineup.
I was thinking that if Fox would benefit from a rest, it might be advantageous to sit him for a game in favor of Zac Jones so that No. 23 would have a greater opportunity to be his best self. I can tell you that there is absolutely no indication of that happening.
“As we’re looking at [Game 4], the immediate picture influences what’s best for [Tuesday] and I do believe that’s the thing we should focus on,” Laviolette said. ”Our intention is to move on and play more after that but right now the decisions we make will be to win the game tomorrow.”
The Panthers are the hunters but the Rangers have a choice not to be the bounty. Sticks up high when opponents are coming in high. Rempe on the loose. That was hockey in the ’70s. It’s the hockey the Rangers need to play in order to survive.