It was Emile Francis who observed that hockey is a slippery game, played as it is on ice.
Last night, with a chance to clinch at least fifth seed in the East and ensure a first-round series against the Devils, the Rangers slipped on a banana peel of a 4-3 shootout loss at the Garden to the Islanders that creates a weekend of uncertainty.
In other words, the predestined result, wasn’t.
The Blueshirts do still control their own’ fate. If they beat the Devils at The Rock tomorrow in regulation to complete an 8-0 season-series sweep, they will finish fourth and thus have home ice in the conference quarters against New Jersey.
But if the Bruins win at home tonight against Buffalo and the Rangers lose in regulation, the Blueshirts will slide to sixth and a series against the Southeast champions.
The Hurricanes are in first at the moment, but if the Caps defeat the Panthers in D.C. tonight, then the Rangers will draw Washington and 65-goal-scorer Alex Ovechkin, the force whom Jaromir Jagr last night called, “The best player in the world right now.”
The Rangers weren’t good enough to win last night. They were outworked much of the way by an Islander team that featured seven players with fewer than 20 games of NHL experience. They surrendered a five-on-three short-handed goal against by Richard Park, only the third such tally in the league this season, while going 0-for-8 on the power play.
Scott Gomez, either hurting badly or slumping badly, achieved little. Sean Avery had another quiet game. Brandon Dubinsky was not at his best. Chris Drury had trouble getting out into open ice. The defensive zone effort was lax in front of Henrik Lundqvist.
Still, the Blueshirts did rally three times, and when Jagr scored at 4:40 of the third to tie it, they appeared primed to steal one, even as the match went into a shootout.
But that’s when arrogance on the part of referee Rob Martell helped do in the Blueshirts – who, by the way, had received the benefit of the officiating doubt until then. For when Martell asked Tom Renney whether his team would shoot first in the shootout, this is how the coach explained what transpired:
“I told the referee what order I wanted to shoot and I put my finger up and told him to give me a second, because I wanted to check with Shanny [Brendan Shanahan] to see if he could go first after he’d been on at the end of [OT],” said Renney, whose team has gone first at essentially every home game.
“I looked up, the referee was gone, he came back and he said, ‘You’re going to shoot second.’
“I said, ‘Wait a minute, I don’t want to shoot second. He said, ‘You told me that.’ I said, ‘No, I said to give me a second.’ He decided I couldn’t change my mind, or he couldn’t change his, which was unfortunate. No shots had been taken. I was very, very clear.”
Lundqvist surrendered three goals on four shots. That was one too many.
“I wasn’t really ready for them to shoot first, but I don’t blame the goals on that,” he said. “Now, we just have to get ready for the big one on Sunday.”