It’s skill, it’s speed, it’s getting on the attack, it’s avoiding turnovers or careless chips that trigger transitions the other way, it’s beating the forecheck with one of their own.
That’s kind of the checklist of do’s and don’ts for the Rangers as they approach Friday’s Game 2 against the Panthers at the Garden in the wake of Wednesday’s 3-0 Game 1 defeat. It’s kind of antiseptic, isn’t it?
But here’s something that is not antiseptic at all. Here’s something that cuts to the heart of the matter and of the litany of franchise history that just does not go away. Here’s something that must be on the team’s agenda.
Fifty years after Dale Rolfe, the Rangers need to make someone on the Florida side pay for Niko Mikkola smashing Filip Chytil into the boards on a meaningless right-wing entry with five seconds remaining in Game 1, preferably the defenseman, himself.
Mikkola was an ersatz physical defenseman at 6-foot-5 when he played for the Rangers last year as a rental, acquired from St. Louis in the same deal that brought Vlad Tarasenko to New York. There was nothing ersatz about the Swede in Game 1. He was dominant physically.
He did nothing wrong by crushing a vulnerable Chytil. These are the conference finals. There are no friends on the other side. I have no clue why No. 72 would have been out there for the final minute after being benched for the previous 14:31. I get that there was no response to the hit at the moment. The game was over. Responding at that point would have been a loser move. But Friday, that’s how failure to respond would be interpreted.
The Rangers had no forecheck and they had no attack in Game 1. But more — or less — than that, they had no attitude. That, every bit as much as drilling down on details, is what will be required of them the rest of the way. The Puddy Tats have a snarl to them. They are ferocious in their pursuit of the puck. The Blueshirts didn’t come close to matching their opponents’ 60-minute urgency.
I am not suggesting that eight minutes from Matt Rempe would be more important to the cause than an improved 20 minutes from Mika Zibanejad and Chris Kreider, and a more complete 24 minutes from Adam Fox, but maybe I am. I know that folks who argue for Rempe’s inclusion in the lineup can be characterized as kind of part of a yahoo lobby.
But I don’t care. Rempe’s value exceeds his average ice time of 6:19 through seven playoff appearances. Everyone recognizes that. The Rangers may derive their identity from Igor Shesterkin, Artemi Panarin, the BFFs and the power play, but no one — and no one — played a, uh, larger role in the Presidents’ Trophy winner’s late-season identity than No. 73.
There’s no reason for the Rangers to disavow it, either. There’s always something more going on when Rempe is on the ice. The Panthers played without a care in the world in Game 1. The Rangers need to get them out of their comfort zone. Maybe a Puddy Tat would even have to keep his head on a swivel with Rempe ramping up on the forecheck. Maybe there is a reason the Blueshirts are 20-3-1 (regular season plus playoffs) when the 6-8 ¹/₂ winger is in the lineup.
Peter Laviolette had a very curious Game 1, constantly switching lines while heaping excess ice time on five forwards in a one-goal contest. If the coach has been reluctant to dress Rempe because he feels the team would be left shorthanded in the third period — Rempe got two third-period shifts over his last three games combined — then the rationalization doesn’t quite hold as well, does it? If Rempe gets hit with a penalty, guess what, the Rangers would just have to kill it the way they have killed 30 of 32 while scoring three shorthanded goals over the last nine games.
It can’t all be about Rempe and it isn’t. No one is suggesting he sucker-punch Sam Bennett in the face. The Rangers have to be better, they have to stake their claim to the series, and Rempe is a part of that.
Honest self-evaluation has consistently been one of the team’s most impressive attributes so I am kind of guessing that the analysis coming from a couple of players and the head coach that Game 1 was kind of there as a 50-50 proposition much of the night was simply for the public’s consumption. The team has to know better than that. The one-goal gap on the scoreboard might as well have been an optical illusion.
If Chytil were up to speed, he would not have been benched. It was a great story in Carolina for Game 3, but if No. 72 is not playing in the third period of a one-goal game, he has no business in the lineup.
The line between panicking and making adjustments at this time of the year is as thin as the red goal line. Wednesday was one game, but it can get late early in the conference final if you let it get away from you. Lineup changes would not signal weakness, they would reflect resourcefulness.
The Rangers have responded to adversity all season. They need to respond on Friday. They need to make the Panthers answer for Chytil. They need a dose of their identity in the lineup.
It’s time for Rempe.