Los Angeles @ NY Rangers 1-2 - Kings Lead Series 3-1
The public challenge came from Henrik
Lundqvist approximately 30 hours before taking the ice for Game 4
of the Stanley Cup Final. He was delivering it to himself. It was the
only thing he could do as he stared at the Kings from the bottom of the mountain. Despite feeling
that he was tracking the puck well, staying patient and sticking with
his game plan in the series, Lundqvist said after practice Tuesday
that what he had done through three games, all losses, wasn't good
enough and that he had to raise his level to give the Rangers a fighting chance against the Kings and an
opportunity to shock the sports world. The challenge worked Wednesday
night at Madison Square Garden. Lundqvist conquered. The Rangers have
a chance. There will be a Game 5. Lundqvist made 40 saves and the
Rangers avoided the dreaded sweep with a 2-1 victory. It was a
departure from the first three games, during which Lundqvist compiled
a save percentage of .892 and a 3.13 goals-against average. Benoit
Pouliot and Martin
St. Louis provided the goals, and Lundqvist provided the heroics.
He allowed a breakaway goal to Kings captain Dustin
Brown in the second period, but stopped the final 26 shots he
faced, including 15 in the third period, when the Kings held the
Rangers to one shot on goal. Lundqvist typically is better in
elimination games, particularly those played at the Garden. He
improved his record to 8-0 with a .968 save percentage in his past
eight elimination games at home. The Rangers' eight straight wins in
home elimination games is an NHL record, according to the Elias
Sports Bureau. Overall, New York is 11-2 in its past 13 elimination
games. Los Angeles still leads the best-of-7 series 3-1. Its next
chance to close out the Rangers and win the Stanley Cup for the
second time in three seasons is Friday, when the teams play Game 5 at
Staples Center (8 p.m. ET; NBC, CBC, RDS). Los Angeles goalie
Jonathan
Quick, coming off a 32-save shutout in Game 3, faced 19 shots and
stopped 17 of them. The Kings were able to control possession most of
the game thanks in part to their 63 percent success rate on faceoffs
(41-24), but they couldn't figure out how to solve Lundqvist enough
to make the Stanley Cup come out of its case. Lundqvist's
efforts Wednesday held up because Pouliot scored on a deflection at
7:25 of the first period and St. Louis beat Quick from the left post
at 6:27 of the second. Pouliot's goal was the Rangers' first since
the second period of Game 2, snapping a drought of 123:01. Lundqvist
also benefited from some puck luck, the same kind the Rangers felt
they didn't get in the first three games of the series, particularly
in Game 3. On two occasions, the puck squeezed through Lundqvist only
to stop directly on the goal line. Defenseman Anton
Stralman used his stick to clear the puck off the goal line in
the first period, and center Derek
Stepan did it with his hand with 1:11 remaining in regulation.
The second puck-on-the-goal-line play created a frenzy in the crease
with bodies crashing in and Lundqvist screaming at referee Wes
McCauley to blow the whistle because he thought he had the puck
tucked into his pads. Stepan was the first to notice the puck was
free and hanging out on the goal line. He said he consciously knew he
couldn't cover the puck because if he did, it would have been a
penalty shot for the Kings. Instead, he swiped at it with the side of
his glove, finally shoving it into Lundqvist's pads. Stepan admitted
it was "a lucky play" that the puck didn't go in. Stralman
said the same thing about his save on the goal line in the first
period. But it was that type of puck luck that the felt they weren't
getting earlier in the series. But the Rangers' luck looked like it
was running dry in the second period, when defenseman Dan
Girardi's stick broke as he attempted to pass the puck across the
blue line to John
Moore. The puck bounced out to the red line, where Brown picked
it up and went in for a breakaway goal, slicing the deficit to 2-1.
It was yet another personal challenge that he accepted and conquered.
Lundqvist needs to keep doing it if the Rangers want to keep playing
because simply being good won't be good enough, not if the Rangers
want to shock the sports world and conquer the Kings with four
straight wins.
Lundqvist: "Being OK or good is not going
to win you games right now. You have to be better than that. We
didn't want to see the Cup coming out on our home ice [Wednesday
night]. Then I realized it was behind me. I actually apologized, but
[McCauley] was cool about it. I'm not going to lie, the first thought
was, 'Here we go again,' I guess the important thing was to respond
the right way. They had a couple chances right after. I just kept
telling myself, 'We need to keep this score going into the third.'
That was my approach. When everything is on the line, you just have
to challenge yourself the right way. You have to leave everything out
there and be extremely focused. One mistake and the season is over.
You're definitely aware of that."
Brown: "We weren't good enough to win.
It's about finding a way to be better. It is an opportunity lost. We
park it and get ready to go again [in Game 5]."Anze Kopitar: "I think we can do a better job getting to him. I think a couple of times where we didn't make it tough on him. The pucks were sitting there. But the pucks he's going to see, he's going to stop. That's just how it is."
Alain Vigneault: "I've been in the game a long time to know that sometimes the hockey gods are there. They were there [Wednesday night]."
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