It’s not often a team can rile up Henrik Lundqvist, but the Pittsburgh Penguins did a solid job of it in the first half of Thursday night’s game against the New York Rangers.
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But just 57 seconds later, the Penguins were ignited by Sidney Crosby, craftily taking his own shot off the backboards and sneaking it behind Lundqvist, where the goalie inadvertently pushed it over the line to tie it 1-1.
He was going to continue his dominance against them if he refuses to let them play the way he did on Thursday night.
But maybe what the Blueshirts weren’t expecting was a blow-up from goalie Henrik Lundqvist, who was red hot in the tumultuous second period when his team saw a 1-0 lead turn into a 3-1 deficit in the final 2:13 of the period.
Rakell’s one-timer on the power play 46 seconds later made it 2-0 less than 6 minutes in. Crosby, who had only six points in his 13 most recent games against the Rangers, alertly tied it at 17:47.
At the time Lundqvist seemed to be angry because his stick was knocked away from him just before that and didn’t get a chance to recover it as the Penguins came in on their rush. Though the whistle immediately blew, Malkin, the right corner, shot the puck at Lundqvist’s feet, prompting Eric Staal, Ryan McDonagh, among other teammates, to confront Malkin.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him that mad”, alternate captain Derek Stepan said of Lundqvist to BlueshirtsUnited.com.
“I don’t know if signals didn’t cross or what, but obviously the referee didn’t pick up on it and he wasn’t feeling right at that time. He chose to stay in then but he couldn’t finish the game”, added the Rangers coach. Even though he finished the period, he did not return for the start of the third period. The final two regular-season meetings between the Penguins and Rangers will be played at Madison Square Garden later this month….
When the third period started Antti Raanta was between the pipes for the Rangers, and Lundqvist, who stopped 19 of the 22 shots he faced in two periods of play, was back in the dressing room receiving treatment for neck spasms.
Vigneault was asked if there was any talk of removing Lundqvist from the game after the collision.
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Only it wasn’t like the playoff series last spring in which Lundqvist and the Rangers dominated the Penguins, winning in five games. Coach Mike Sullivan said after the game that Porter was undergoing testing, but that the Penguins likely will have news about him today. “Listen, it’s an emotional game out there”. “It gets frustrating, but we kept coming at them”.
