RALEIGH, N.C. — Chris Kreider doesn't take into consideration The Letter.
“Particularly after a Recreation 7 win,” the Rangers’ longest-tenured participant stated late Monday evening.
If there's some introspection happening inside Kreider, this isn't the setting through which he'll present it. A dingy again room in PNC Enviornment in entrance of cameras and a gaggle of reporters doesn't lend itself to that.
However there's something poetic in Kreider, the bridge participant between the Rangers of Henrik Lundqvist and the Rangers of Igor Shesterkin, scoring twice in a domineering 6-2 Recreation 7 victory over Carolina to ship the Blueshirts again to the Japanese Convention Last for the primary time since 2015.
That sequence was additionally in opposition to the Lightning. And Kreider, all of 23 years outdated when the Rangers had been shut out in Recreation 7 at Madison Sq. Backyard, shedding their final finest likelihood to win a Stanley Cup with that group of gamers, is the one one left.
Since then, he has endured each nadir of the rebuild. The tail finish of Alain Vigneault’s tenure, which completed with a 34-39-9 2017-18 season — on the time, the primary shedding season for the franchise since 2003-04. Three years of David Quinn through which essentially the most significant video games had been three straight no-shows in opposition to the Hurricanes within the Toronto bubble. And in February 2018, The Letter, telling followers to anticipate a teardown.
That course of is over now. And that is the outcome.
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“Impulsively, I’m the outdated man,” Kreider stated. “However there’s clearly some similarities [between the teams].”
On the prime of the record: Each could be characterised as “cockroaches.”
“We simply didn’t go away,” Kreider stated. “That’s all the time been, I assume, ingrained within the tradition of each good crew I’ve been on right here. We don’t go away. Whatever the rating. No matter the place the sport’s at. We simply carry on looking for our sport.”
The Rangers needed to do no on the lookout for their sport on Monday evening, taking an early 2-0 lead — the second of which got here on a Kreider power-play tip-in — and by no means as soon as wanting again. He added his second objective at 3:59 of the third, a dashing breakaway with a backhand end previous Pyotr Kochetkov. It was Kreider’s sixtieth objective this season after he tied Adam Graves for second in franchise historical past with 52 through the common season. With two extra, he'll move the 62 that Graves completed with on the finish of that postseason.
The yr, in fact, was 1993-94. The Rangers hope this season ends in the identical place as that one — a objective that now appears extra tangible than ever.
Kreider, down and self-critical sitting in the identical seat simply days earlier after the Rangers suffered a demoralizing Recreation 5 loss, had as little curiosity in dissecting what modified as he did in speaking about The Letter.
“Puck went in once I shot it,” he stated. “I simply assume a rising tide lifts all ships.”
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