Rangers 4 Flyers 2
It took all of six weeks, 20 games and one visit from the Flyers, but this much is now clear: New York has a new hockey favorite son and his name is Eric Lindros.
Charged from the opportunity to witness the above-the-title marquee matchup between No. 88 and his former team, the Garden crowd responded with full throat in creating an electric atmosphere of a magnitude last experienced during the 1997 playoffs.
And the fans responded with ovations for Lindros, whose acquisition in August was greeted with equal parts skepticism, anger and despair, and whose introduction prior to the Oct. 7 home opener was received with an equal measure of cheers and jeers.
But there were no dissenting sounds heard last night during the match that just never seemed to stop, no dissenting sounds aimed at Lindros or his team – the Rangers.
Directly off the Broadway playwright’s computer screen, it was Lindros who scored the first goal in a compelling 4-2 victory that gave the 12-7-1 Blueshirts their sixth straight triumph and a share of the Eastern Conference lead, banging one in from the left goalmouth on a feed from Theo Fleury, who himself would score the winner midway through the third.
“Obviously I wanted to be on the winning side,” said Lindros, whose days of anonymity on the streets of Manhattan are likely drawing to a close. “There was a good feeling in the room, my teammates understood it.
“It’s nice to know when you go into the dressing room that it’s loaded with guys who are special to you.”
If No. 88 – who delivered the game’s signature hit by riding Jeremy Roenick hard into the wall midway through the third – stood tall over the proceedings, he was supported magnificently by teammates who wanted to win as badly for him as for themselves, and most notably by Brian Leetch and Mike Richter, merely sensational in repelling one Philadelphia thrust after another in the emotional match.
“I think everybody wanted to win for all the right reasons, but particularly for Eric,” the goaltender, 7-1 with a 1.32 GAA in his last eight starts, said. “Eric has handled himself with a ton of class, he’s been nothing but a great teammate.
“For him, it’s all about getting wins. We could not ask for any more.”
The pace was frantic almost from the outset – too fast, really, for the Rangers, who yielded an enormous number of odd-man rushes and glorious scoring chances. The Rangers led 2-0 after the second on goals from Lindros and Radek Dvorak, who converted a Mark Messier relay to complete a play that began with a Manny Malhotra rush.
“Manny gave us an unbelievably strong game,” said Ron Low, who used Malhotra in Zdeno Ciger’s (former) spot in the lineup. “By far his best since I’ve been here.”
Richter was sensational again, holding a shutout through 40 minutes despite his team having been outshot 30-14. But the breakdowns – most originating in the neutral zone by hyped-up forwards chasing the puck – finally caught up to the Rangers when Jan Hlavac converted a two-on-one at 3:45 of the third, just 1:10 before Roenick scored on a breakaway.
The resourceful Rangers responded. Fleury took a stick in the face from Eric Desjardins – “It was like my head was on a tee” – only to get the power-play winner by going to the net at 8:20. Petr Nedved sealed it for his team and for his city’s newest hockey hero.
“Eric has played with a lot of heart and a lot of soul for the hockey club,” Low said. “He’s a world-class hockey player.”
Who at this very moment is leading the Rangers and the Garden back to the future.
