NEW YORK — Stump, the Sussex spaniel named the Westminster Kennel Club’s best in show three weeks ago at Madison Square Garden, wasn’t available to comment on the Avalanche’s showing in a 6-1 loss to the New York Rangers in the same building Saturday.
If he had been, he might have barked out a message along these lines, “And you thought WE were a bunch of dogs?”
That final score? It was worse than that, both competitively and then the way the Avs got into the “message-sending” mode in the final minutes.
The Rangers were up 2-0 after 68 seconds. Peter Budaj was chased after giving up three goals on nine shots in the first 6:36. It was 4-0 after one period, and the Rangers, who had scored as many as three goals only twice in their previous 14 games, suddenly looked like (take your pick) the 1984 Oilers.
Scott Gomez ended up with a goal and two assists, and former Avalanche standout Chris Drury and Nikolai Zherdev had a goal and an assist as six Rangers scored.
“They were desperate early and got a couple of quick ones,” Avalanche defenseman Adam Foote said. “We were almost the deer in the headlights. We didn’t react too well.”
To say the Avs didn’t quit is true, but it would stretch credibility to praise them for not doing something like leaving the building after the first period and seeing if they could catch the opening curtain of Will Ferrell’s nearby one-man Broadway play. Colorado at least spoiled Henrik Lundqvist’s bid for a shutout with Ryan Smyth’s goal at 13:05 of the second period.
The final minutes took longer to play than the final minutes of an NBA game, and there weren’t even 27 timeouts. The Avalanche went through the pro forma motions of showing spunk, including Cody McCormick’s cross- check to the face of Swedish winger Fredrik Sjostrom, plus yapping and other reactions that helped the teams pile up 68 penalty minutes in the final five minutes on the clock. No, it wasn’t “message sending” in anticipation of a future meeting between the two teams, given the rarity of interconference matchups in the NHL. The message was that the Avs wouldn’t go away quietly.
There were “only” two fights — rookie winger Chris Stewart vs. Rangers heavyweight Colton Orr, and then, in part as a reaction to Stewart’s fight, Darcy Tucker vs. the Rangers’ Paul Mara. But the chippiness was both pervasive and predictable.
“You’re never happy with the way things are going for our team, so it’s something that happens in hockey, I’ll say,” McCormick said. He said his hit on Sjostrom, which drew him a double-minor for roughing, came because “there was something that could have been done earlier. It was just the way it was going.”
Said Tucker: “It was an emotional time for us. We didn’t play well tonight, and we got down 3-0. They took the game over. It’s part of it that you try and stick together. Stewie had to fight somebody he probably shouldn’t have to fight at this point of his career.”
