Tanner Glass remembered it well, and laughed while telling the story of how Alain Vigneault came about his favorite postseason phrase.
“Whistle-to-whistle — that’s something that came from our time in Vancouver,” Glass told The Post on Saturday morning before the Rangers took the Garden ice for Game 2 of their first-round series against the Penguins, having won Game 1 of the best-of-seven on Thursday.
“Mikael Samuelsson,” Glass said, thinking of the veteran winger on that team with him, with Vigneault as their coach. “During a meeting we had going into the playoffs — we had about 10 games to go — our team was getting a little…distracted at times. That’s something [Samuelsson] thought up. That’s where that phrase came from. Maybe not totally, in AV’s mind, but I remember it being a thing then, and it’s funny how it’s still around now.”
It’s funny, too, how Glass is the epitome of what Vigneault is trying to instruct.
Always a physical presence with a penchant for pugilism, Glass was restrained in his extracurricular activity not just in Game 1, a tight 2-1 win against the team he played for last season, but also since rejoining the lineup as a regular coming out of the All-Star break in January.
“Our team isn’t built for that,” Glass said. “We’re not a team that needs to be mixing it up too much, or intimidating teams. We’re much more a puck possession team and an offensive team.”
For a while, it looked as if Glass and his three-year, $4.35 million deal might not fit into that ideology.
Go back to Dec. 30, a practice at a tattered rink in Farmers Branch, Texas. The night before, Glass had committed two bad penalties in a 3-2 loss to the Stars, ending the Blueshirts’ eight-game winning streak.
The 31-year-old Glass sat there and knew the questions about his viability in the lineup were coming, answered all of them with professional aplomb, then was a healthy scratch for the next six straight.
“That was probably the time I felt the worst this season,” Glass recalled. “Your confidence is not high, and have a night like I had that night, you’re feeling kind of down. It’s a long season and you have to try to stay even throughout it. That’s the challenge sometimes, is to keep that even keel.”
Glass returned to the lineup on Jan. 27 against the Islanders, and starting with that game, he played 35 of the final 38 contests of the regular season, adding a solid Game 1 performance against an injury-ravaged and beleaguered Pittsburgh defense.
“I thought they played extremely well and they forced their team to take a couple of penalties,” Vigneault said of Glass’ line, with Dominic Moore and Jesper Fast. “It was a good night on their part.”
To add intrigue to interest, another member of that Canucks team with Glass and Samuelsson was agitator Max Lapierre, who just so happens to now be on the Penguins — and who just so happened to look to be inviting Glass for a fight in Game 1.
Taking place before the whistle, Glass heeded his coach’s mantra, and didn’t even look at his former linemate.
“I know exactly what he’s trying to do,” Glass said. “But that’s part of his job, that’s what he likes to do. He likes to engage people. Even if I like to do it, it’s not good for our team to see me be yapping with him. It’s his game. It’s 100 percent what he wants to do. But it’s easy [for me] to not.”
Maybe it’s easier because Glass was there when “whistle-to-whistle” was born. Or maybe it’s easier because Glass is now a valued contributor to his team for what he does while the clock is running.
“With my role, with my job, you’re not always feeling the love sometimes,” he said. “It’s not always a heralded night, or a flashy night. So as far as handling the ups and downs, I don’t know, as you get older and you’ve been around the league a little bit, you start to not sweat the small stuff as much.”
Nothing but what’s between the whistles.