With all the noise, all the verbal jousting, all the distractions, there happened to be a very important game on the ice at the Garden on Sunday night.
And yet the Canadiens and Rangers played for the majority of the evening as if their minds were elsewhere, turning Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals into a sloppy and disjointed affair, one that was much more of a slog fest than a track meet, and one that crept up on the heels of Memorial Day.
Finally, with 6:02 gone by in overtime, Martin St. Louis managed to bury an open chance from the right circle and win it for the Rangers, 3-2, taking a commanding 3-1 series lead into Tuesday night's Game 5, when they have a chance to finish off the Canadiens in Montreal.
"Without a doubt, for both teams it's a huge game," coach Alain Vigneault said Sunday morning. "Both teams know the importance of it."
Vigneault and his Montreal counterpart, Michel Therrien, spent the two days leading up to this game in a war of words. An assortment of barbs were sent back and forth about numerous issues, including the attendance of assistant coaches at practice, the admittance of knowledge concerning an opposing player's injury, and, most pointedly for this game, how the officials have missed calls and how each team might or might not be playing dirty.
"There's a lot of talking, a lot of harping on what people are saying," Rangers forward Brian Boyle said Sunday morning. "I just want to play a hockey game."
That game included a combined 13 penalties, nine taken by the Rangers, two of which were high-sticking calls when the supposedly victimized Canadiens' player did at least a bit of acting to help the refs with the call — the first P.K. Subban, then Brian Gionta, both in the second period. Which is not to exonerate the Rangers from their handful of messy mistakes, because they were abundant.
On top of that, Therrien peppered official Dan O'Rourke all night, and if it helped or not, his guys got quite a few man-advantage opportunities.
Carl Hagelin beats Dustin Tokarski in the first period.Photo: UPI
And the Rangers penalty kill gave a valiant effort — or the Canadiens power play showed ample ineptitude. Either way, with just two minutes gone by in the third period, the Habs tied 2-2 it when Subban fired a shot through traffic, beating Henrik Lundqvist low on the glove side, the first power-play goal the Rangers gave up in eight games.
The Habs then seemed to have the game-winner when Alex Galchenyuk hit the cross bar with 3:15 remaining in regulation, but it somehow rang the pipe and hit the ice just in front of the goal line, barely rolling out.
Things picked up quite a bit in the middle period, as the Canadiens tied it 1-1 at the 8:08 mark when defenseman Francis Bouillon, playing his first game this series, ripped a wrist shot into Lundqvist's left shoulder, bouncing off and into the net. It caught the Garden crowd quite by surprise, but there was no letdown from the Rangers.
They retook the lead in the last minute of the second when Derick Brassard came in on a breakaway and rifled a slap shot passed rookie goalie Dustin Tokarski, who to that point had played another outstanding game.
"Derick Brassard, let me tell you, he's a good player," said Therrien, as Brassard had missed the previous two games with an upper-body injury. "We're going to get to pay attention to him."
The first period was choppy and broken up by four penalties, no power-play goals, and both teams struggling to maintain pace or momentum. On one of the three penalties the Rangers took, just past the seven-minute mark, Boyle made a great outlet pass to his dynamic penalty-killing partner, Carl Hagelin, who broke in on a breakaway and netted a neat backhand under Tokarski for a 1-0 lead.
"When Carl plays a north-‑south game, a quick game, he can be a handful for any defenseman in the league," Vigneault said. "A lot of speed can make it challenging for the opposition, if you use it in the right way at the right time."
Timing is now everything, as the series returns to the Bell Centre with the Canadiens on the ropes and the Rangers on the verge of the Stanley Cup final.
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