source : Faceoff.com
Rule No. 1 in this Stanley Cup final: when you’ve done interviews in both places on the same day and have to choose between Santa Monica or El Segundo as a placeline on your column, choose Santa Monica.
Rule No. 2: If your team loses Game 1 after leading 2-0, don’t sugar-coat it.
“One thing that’s real evident to me, and it should be to our whole group, is we’re not going to beat this team if we do not all bring our A game,” New York Rangers head coach Alain Vigneault said Thursday, on the morning after Game 1.
“It is that strong of an opponent that we’re playing against. We had Hank (goalie Henrik Lundqvist) that brought his A game last night. We had a couple guys. I don’t want to name who. But we’re not going to win if we bring our B game to the table.
“They’re one of the best teams I’ve seen in a long time. Areas to exploit, they don’t jump out at you. We’re going to have to be better than we were.”
Coming from Vigneault, that’s like Hamlet’s soliloquy.
But given the circumstances — his team fresher, the L.A. Kings seemingly wearing “gumboots” at the start, as defenceman Willie Mitchell put it — squandering a 2-0 first-period lead and losing 3-2 in overtime Wednesday night was just about the worst possible way to begin a Stanley Cup final.
It was the exact opposite for the Kings, who looked as though they’d just knocked over Fort Knox,
and got away with it.
Even a team as accustomed as the Kings are to shrugging off an early deficit, in a game or a series, and just getting on with it, has to wonder sometimes at its own ability to recover.
Kings coach Darryl Sutter said he knew his team might be especially vulnerable in Game 1.
“Yep. Obviously with the turnaround, guys are not machines,” he said Thursday morning. “It was an emotional series against Chicago, and Game 7. You know, you play seven games, you’re actually playing three overtime periods in there, so when you add that in there, you’re close to eight games when it’s all said and done.
“It was tough, and then we got home in the middle of the night and had the whole media day and had to practice in the afternoon, which is not their normal schedule. Hopefully this’ll recharge us a little bit.”
‘This’ being two off-days before Saturday afternoon’s 7 p.m. ET start of Game 2 at Staples Center.
You shouldn’t feel too horrible for the Rangers. Their hotel, right on the beach a few hundred metres from the Santa Monica pier, offers stunning views of the ocean, sand and … er, wildlife passing by in the human parade.
A couple of early-arriving reporters encountered Vigneault sitting on his balcony, half-reading a paper, preoccupied. The Belmont Stakes could have been happening below him and he’d have been thinking about the hockey game — that one, and the next one.
Each team had seen the other on video, extensively. Yet each was taken aback by some aspect of the opponent’s game.
For the Kings, it was the speed of the Rangers’ forwards, notably Carl Hagelin, which caused a good deal of havoc, early and late, and forced goalie Jonathan Quick to be a game-changer. Marty St. Louis had three or four gilt-edged chances that Quick stopped.
“We’ve talked lots about (their speed), but you still have to engage in it,” said Sutter.
For the Rangers, it was the Kings’ implacable stick-to-itiveness.
“They were a good team in the years past. They’re a real good team now,” said Vigneault, whose Vancouver Canucks lost in five games to the Kings during L.A.’s 2012 Cup run.
“Nothing jumped out at me in the sense that everything that I expected, everything that we had talked to our players about what to expect, they did it down to a T. They keep doing it. They stay with it. They don’t deviate. It’s tough to exploit any areas because they’re that good.”
In truth, though, the Kings haven’t been anywhere near as airtight as in the past, and have given up some horrific turnovers and Grade A chances in these playoffs.
Through the Chicago series, and to an extent in Wednesday’s opener of the Cup final, it has seemed as though the games got away from the coaches and just played their own tune, which was probably why they were so entertaining.
Almost from the get-go Wednesday, Sutter was mixing and plugging different centres into different lines, even juggling defence pairings, looking for energy.
Eventually, the Kings found some, but it took a while.
“Partway through the first period, once I recognized guys didn’t have their game, it wasn’t just Mike (Richards) and Willie (Justin Williams), it was a lot of guys. Jeff (Carter) played a lot with Kyle (Clifford) and Trevor (Lewis). Stolly (Jarret Stoll) played with everybody. Basically we were trying to manage (Anze Kopitar’s) game.”
As usual, they managed.
But no matter how many times they do it, starting in a hole is not the preferred method of winning playoff games.
Like a dog that chases cars, one of these days they are apt to end up under the wheels. But it hasn’t happened yet.
“Well, you can’t chase leads all the time,” said Sutter. “It’s the National Hockey League. It’s the best league in the world. There are two teams left out of 30, which means that they’ve both come a long ways, and they both had to be resilient. You don’t get any award for ‘resilient.’
“So we can play a lot better. And it’s way better when you’re not chasing the lead.”
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