This was going to be the best of it for the Rangers, the great moment so far in the great hockey spring at Madison Square Garden, even after the two Game 7s the Rangers had already played, even after Brad Richards’ goal in the last seven seconds. Even after triple overtime against Washington. This was going to be the night when the Rangers came from 0-3 down against the Devils, came all the way back from that, put themselves within one win of going back to the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time since Messier and Leetch and Richter.
So they finally tied Jersey at 3-3 in the third period, and it was all going against the Devils now, the night had gone all wrong. You don’t blow that kind of lead in the playoffs, still win the game. Rangers fans were screaming their heads off, waving those white towels, chanting “Marty” at Martin Brodeur so loudly you were sure they would hear it in Times Square.
PHOTOS: DEVILS PUSH RANGERS TO BRINK WITH GAME 5 WIN
DEVILS DOWN RANGERS 5-3 IN GAME 5 AT THE GARDEN
Only then the night ended the way it began in Game 5. Ilya Kovalchuk came hard into the corner to Henrik Lundqvist’s left and then Stephen Gionta, who had scored the first goal of this game so long ago, picked up the job and the puck and got it to Ryan Carter and the puck was behind Lundqvist.
Suddenly the Garden was knocked back down in that moment, as still now at the end of the hockey night, in the great hockey spring, as it had been in the beginning, 4-3 for the Devils, 4:24 left. Then Zach Parise, such a tough out, put one in the empty net with 31.2 seconds left. Three at the start for the Devils, two at the end. Now the Devils are the ones who are a victory away from playing the Los Angeles Kings for the Stanley Cup.
“There was no sense of panic,” Devils coach Peter DeBoer said when it was over, talking about the loud moment on the Rangers’ side of the Hudson when it was 3-3.
“I felt that when we tied it,” John Tortorella said, “we stopped making plays.”
“Then they scored a goal,” Tortorella said. “They made a play.”
And what would have been such a great victory, what would have been one to talk about with the best Rangers victories in the past over the Jersey Devils at this time of year, had become this kind of hard, hard defeat.
It had been 3-0 for Jersey after those first 10 minutes. But then, under five minutes left in the period, Brandon Prust managed to pick up the puck and get in clean on Brodeur. Not a clean break.
Clean enough. As Prust started to go down, under pressure at the very end of this play, he managed to push the puck past Brodeur. It was 3-1 now. The Rangers were on the board. They were in the game. At last.
