Erik Christensen, the first shooter in last night’s shootout, made Dan Ellis look ridiculous on a backhand. The Rangers clearly had the Lightning where they wanted, with just three chances to get one against Henrik Lundqvist.
The King of the Shootout, Christensen, came to the Garden last night 22-9 for his career, 48 goals allowed in 194 shots for a .753 percentage upon which the Rangers, never mind Game 82 last season at Philadelphia in April, were happy to take their chances into a Merry Christmas.
Then Victor Hedman, the first Lightning shooter, put a heavy 15-footer off the bottom of Lundqvist’s glove. And after Derek Stepan lost to an Ellis poke-check, Adam Hall — Adam Hall!
— snapped one by Lundqvist’s stick side.
“Two quick ones, that doesn’t happen on Hank,” said John Tortorella, but Lundqvist was saved when Mats Zuccarello, playing his first NHL game, slowed to almost a stop before making Ellis slide again and scoring on his backhand.
The 4-3 Lightning victory had been tied 3-3 after 65 minutes, and now the shootout was tied, 2-2 after the first three rounds. And holy Marek Malik, we had no idea what was to come.
The Rangers were without Marian Gaborik, who didn’t play with a sore groin. The Lightning were without nobody, obviously, if coach Guy Boucher thought he could save Steven Stamkos, who had scored his 27th goal of the season in the game, for the fourth round.
You never know. Or, maybe Boucher did. Stamkos, with the deadliest shot in the NHL, came in close, tried to deke and was beaten on a poke-check.
“They have a lot of skilled players,” said Lundqvist, certainly more than the Rangers had. But he stopped Pavel Kubina with his blocker, butterflied when Simon Gagne tried to go five-hole, made Vincent Lecavalier hit the goalie’s right pad.
Martin St. Louis turned around completely and put one off Lundqvist’s arm, Mattias Ritola and Teddy Purcell couldn’t beat the glove and Dominic Moore failed to get one over Lundqvist’s blocker.
It looked like he had a good book. Turns out, Lundqvist had no book at all.
“I didn’t know anything about anybody,” he said. “I was just trying to be patient.”
It was quite the contrast to Ellis trying to poke-check anything he thought he could reach. And whatever impure thoughts we purists think of having six shooters decide a game that 36 skaters couldn’t over 65 minutes, it was quite the theatre, too.
When shootouts go long, they become much more the team competition that this game had been, when the Lighting converted ghastly giveaways by Michal Rozsival and Dan Girardi to St. Louis, when Stepan pulled Ellis off the post and slid a backhand in along the goalline to tie it up with 8:42 to play.
But Ellis matched Lundqvist through 10 rounds, then poke-checked the last Rangers shooter, Marc Staal, before Ryan Malone put one down off the crossbar and in to win the sixth-longest shootout in their short NHL history and the third longest for the Rangers.
Lundqvist won the previous two.
“It’s exciting when you win them and a downer when you lose,” Tortorella said. “[But] you cannot get down, you cannot judge [the team] on them.”
Somehow, that didn’t save Lundqvist from his own judgment.
“The difference in a shootout is very small,” he said. “When you lose, you take it pretty personally.
“You want to be better. It’s frustrating. We were the better team the whole game.”