KEN Hitchcock said it wasn’t a matter of getting the sleep out of his team’s eyes, more that his Flyers couldn’t believe what they were seeing.
“The tempo I saw the Rangers play against Dallas, against Colorado, against us today, I don’t think anybody is ready for that,” said the coach. “It’s not the way they played last year, when they played more risk and flow.
“All of a sudden they’re knocking people off the puck. We just needed to get back and play gritty again.”
Which, predictably, the big Flyers did, leaning and leaning and leaning against a team trying to get back on its feet after six lean and playoff-less years, until a goal in the third period and another in overtime turned a 1-0 Ranger lead into a 2-1 Philadelphia victory. In the end, the point gained by a home team that sagged more than it really crumbled, could not be looked at as a glass half-filled, more one half-drained by the deeper visitors.
“They are a good team that keeps throwing good lines at you,” said Eric Lindros. If, three seasons, later, he is weary from being asked about playing against his former team, Lindros seemed weary, period, after playing in his first game in eight with the same energy he had been exhibiting before suffering a sternoclavicular strain.
If, after an abysmal 2002-03 season, the Big E needs keep it up to convince fans that it was indeed good to see him back, that doesn’t make him different from too many Rangers, only more important.
It was fine for Glen Sather to put Lindros on Bobby Holik’s wing for re-starters, seeing as Mark Messier is the Rangers’ leading goal-scorer in the early going, but the afterglow of the wondrous 1,851-point milestone he reached Tuesday night turned red in the face when The Captain coughed up the puck to Sami Kapanen, forcing a breakaway-saving takedown by Brian Leetch, leading to Tony Amonte’s game-tying, power-play goal.
While anybody can make a mistake, those who don’t want to get hit make more. The sheer size of Keith Primeau and Michal Handzus up the Flyer center-ice called for Lindros, rather than a 42-year-old man in the middle yesterday afternoon. And the energy level required over 82 games does, too, against opponents great or small.
We would like to believe the process of natural selection would make this apparent to Glen Sather, come, say, January, except that after taking over then a year ago, there was no indication the coach-GM saw anything other than a Messier barely past his prime. Dominic Moore, a rookie center who did nothing to earn a demotion to Hartford, lost out to the numbers yesterday, returned not just temporarily to the Wolfpack.
Jamie Lundmark, another center of considerable promise, moved to the wing to leave room for Messier, is still here, but for what is depressingly unclear. Yesterday, Lundmark played 2:55.
Now, a Flying Wedge of Holik and Lindros may seem like an intriguing idea, one to which we gave an enthusiastic endorsement a year ago until we saw it didn’t work. A timid Lindros, supposedly spooked out by one mild concussion now in two-plus years, was not the one we saw a year ago. We saw more a guy shackled to the boards, unable to get up a head of steam, getting fewer offensive opportunities in scoring position, and losing his confidence and hands as a miserable season spiraled.
Sather saw how well Lindros played for the first half of his first Ranger season when he was double-shifted by Ronnie Low. So it probably isn’t so much he has a short memory than the fear of getting caught short of gas in a third period against a team that comes in four waves like Philadelphia.
Then yesterday it happened regardless. The Rangers are playing with more discipline, but so will all of the eight eventual playoff teams in the East. And they won’t be one of them until the guys who can carry them get that full opportunity.