The Rangers made a vow this post-season. If they couldn’t win the Stanley Cup this spring, the most certainly would avenge it.
And tonight, the Ranger version of Tony Stark (Chris Kreider) and Captain America (Ryan McDonagh) certainly did just that.
“We were pretty positive on the bench,” said the Rangers version of Hawkeye (Derek Stepan). “We felt we did a lot of good things for 60 minutes tonight. To find a way to get one, to push it to overtime and I felt we did a lot of good thing in overtime.”
With just one minute and 41 seconds left in the game and their season, the Rangers finally showed life, when Kreider came in with a shot from the point to tie the game. Then with a little over 10 minutes left in overtime, McDonagh sent the series back to Washington.
The Rangers need to play with the same intensity as they did tonight in the last 12 minutes of this match. They need to be desperate in Washington if they will be playing at Madison Square Garden again this year.
With The King in goal (sure we can call Henrik Lundqvist Thor or the Vision, but he has been and always will be the King), the Rangers have a chance to win this one, but their game plan must follow the desperate formula they showed tonight.
“We were pretty quiet; it was pretty calm,” said defenseman Marc Staal. “I think we weren’t too riled up. I thought we kept our cool, we knew we had a lot of work ahead of us. We went out and did the job. We stayed aggressive. Our fore check was great. We made them pay. Obviously it’s a great game. We are excited to go back to Washington and put some more pressure on them.”
And believe me, Washington will be feeling the heat. There is no way they want to have this series return to New York. No sire re, Bob. They will be desperate to close it out on home ice and they will be looking to Ultron himself (Alex Ovechkin) to lead the way. The Rangers did a great job tonight shutting him down. Now they will have to do it again on Sunday.
“We’re just trying to continue to play the right way,” said Nick Fury himself, coach Alain Vigneault. “I think we’ve been playing some solid hockey at both ends of the rink against a very good team. Our starts have been good and we’ve been getting some good looks (and) not getting rewarded for a lot of our good plays. But at the end of the day, that’s it, we’re still breathing. We’re going to go into Washington on Sunday and give it our best shot.”
The Rangers will need help from all end. Be it Thor (Carl Hagelin), Quicksilver (Jesper Fast), The Vision (Derek Brassard), The Hulk (Dan Girardi) or any other Avenger, the Rangers will need their best effort, if there’s will be a Game 7.
It should be interesting to see.
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