On Monday night in Madison Square Garden it was the Tyler Johnson three-goal circus as the Tampa Bay forward scored a hat trick to lead the Lightning in a rout of the New York Rangers, 6-2.
“We definitely didn’t want to go to Tampa down 2-0,” Johnson said. “That’s always a tough thing to get back, especially against a great team like New York. But I think what we were mainly focused on is the fact that we worked so hard to get into this position here and we didn’t want to just squander it away.
“We felt like we didn’t play very well in Game 1 (a 2-1 loss Saturday) and we definitely needed more. I thought the team responded very well tonight and I thought we played a great game.”
The Rangers were looking for a 2-0 series lead but instead discovered their offense was still AWOL and their defense let them down as they surrendered three power play goals and shorthanded goal in the shelling.
Chris Kreider and Derek Stepan were the goal scorers for the Blueshirts who still are without production from their regular season offensive threats.
Henrik Lundqvist made 20 saves and was victimized by six goals in the loss. While the club in front of him was off he was still responsible for the success of the Lightning strikes.
“You just have to wipe it clean. It’s one game,” Lundqvist said. “It’s a tied series. We’re going down to Tampa. There were a lot of good things tonight, we played with good speed, but a lot comes down to making good decisions with the puck on the blue lines. You could see when we lost the puck how fast they came back at us, and they don’t need much. They have a couple guys that can definitely find the net.”
In a not so veiled call-out of his absentee forwards, the Rangers bench boss saluted Johnson’s efforts.
“Without a doubt, [Johnson] took his game to another level tonight,” Rangers coach Alain Vigneault said. “We need our top guys to do the same thing.”
After a long stretch of one-goal games and 2-1 decisions, the rout on Monday night should serve as a wake-up call for a group of highly paid players who are tasked with putting pucks in the net when it matters most.
“It’s embarrassing,” Rangers captain Ryan McDonagh said. “There are a lot of things you want to say right now, but talking doesn’t do much. Our guys better figure it out quickly here and realize that stupid, selfish penalties are going to cost us against this team. They have too much skill. [We were] shooting ourselves in the foot from the very first few minutes … [that] is not going to give us a chance to win.”
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