Utter disbelief.
That was all there could be. That was all there was.
“A little shell shocked right now,” captain Ryan McDonagh said.
And how could he not be? With the final seconds ticking away, Game 1 of this second-round series between the Rangers and Capitals tied, 1-1, the puck went into the corner behind the Henrik Lundqvist’s net. Dan Boyle got it, and tried to just freeze it into overtime. But Nicklas Backstrom had a different idea, and came slamming into him at a dangerous angle, crunching Boyle hard against the boards and dazing him as he fell to the ice, jarring the puck loose.
Alex Ovechkin found it, then found Joel Ward inexplicably alone in front. Ward batted it under Lundqvist, and that was it.
With 1.3 seconds hanging on the Garden scoreboard, the Rangers had managed to lose Game 1 to the Capitals, 2-1, and start the second-round series off with a jaw-dropping disappointment.
“Whatever happens, we have to keep playing until the whistle,” Lundqvist said. “That’s a lesson learned for us.”
The Rangers were surely harboring some frustration with Backstrom’s hit, but they mostly kept it professional in addressing it afterward. That is, after they were back in the locker room and after a little scrum broke out following that final horn, which echoed through the stands while the 18,006 inside tried to figure out what the heck just happened.
“I just saw Boyle on the ice after it, but some of the guys saw [the hit] and it sounds like a charge,” defenseman Marc Staal said. “His back is turned the whole way, and he’s just standing there freezing the puck. He takes a run at him. It seems cheap.”
As for coach Alain Vigneault, who was as angered as he’s been all season, he decided to take a page from the John Tortorella handbook and avoid saying something he would regret.
“I’m not going to comment on the referees,” Vigneault said. “Don’t ask me about it. Ask me anything else, but don’t ask me about that.”
As for the condition of Boyle, Vigneault again deferred.
“Couldn’t tell you,” he said. “Didn’t ask.”
It seemed Vigneault was more upset about how his team allowed the goal than about the hit that led to it. When Ovechkin got the puck behind the goal line, there was no one covering the front of the net, leaving Ward wide open.
“The last few seconds there, I feel like we all just kind of stopped when Boyle went down,” said Lundqvist, who had 27 saves but stormed off the ice quickly after the game ended. “We lost our focus a little bit and give up the last chance.”
The Rangers had played an up-and-down game, at times sloppy with the puck and hardly sustaining any pressure on Washington goalie Braden Holtby. But they managed to tie it, 1-1, with just 4:39 remaining in the third period, when Kevin Hayes took a long shot from just inside the blue line that ended up bouncing off Jesper Fast’s leg and in.
That had negated a first-period, power-play goal from Ovechkin, who was an absolute monster all over the ice.
“He played a great game,” Vigneault said of Ovechkin. “There is no doubt that one of my focuses is going to be to get my top players to play at a top level. Washington’s top players tonight played a real strong game, and we’re going to have to be better.”
That will be Saturday afternoon, when the Rangers are going to have to raise their level if they don’t want to head to Washington down 2-0 in the best-of-seven series. This type of loss could linger, but only if they let it.
“It’s like losing in overtime,” Lundqvist said. “You just have to put it behind you. You have to move on. Right now it’s going to be tough for the next couple hours, then you start focusing on the next game. It’s going to come fast.”