Rangers Post Win Over Caps at LinesMaker

Rangers Post Win Over Caps

NEW YORK – Chris Krei­der fid­geted with the black lid he was don­ning, the cha­peau handed out to the New York Rangers player of the game after each Broad­way Blueshirt victory.

“It’s a lit­tle small,” he admitted.

Unlike his impact, which has been huge.

The head­piece he was wear­ing is known inside the New York Rangers dress­ing room as The Broad­way Hat, which was pur­chased by Brad Richards dur­ing the team’s early sea­son trip to Europe to hon­our the guy who makes the biggest splash in the course of a win.

At this rate, Krei­der might be keep­ing the thing per­ma­nently.

For a kid like this to score his sec­ond game-winning goal in the span of just three play­off out­ings is the kind of Cin­derella story you might only find under the bright lights and beck­on­ing stages of Broad­way, which is just a short break­away from Madi­son Square Garden.

As Frank Sina­tra once said of New York: “If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere …”

Ol’ Blue Eyes was right on the mark. Chris Krei­der is prime evi­dence of that.

Hav­ing helped Boston Col­lege to an NCAA hockey title ear­lier this month, Krei­der ripped a slap­shot past Wash­ing­ton Cap­i­tals goalie Braden Holtby on Sat­ur­day after­noon to snap a 1–1 tie at 7:00 of the third period.

Less than two min­utes later, here was this raw rookie again, set­ting up Richards for the insur­ance tally in a 3–1 Rangers win that gave New York a 1–0 lead in this best-of-seven East­ern Con­fer­ence semifinal.

When the Rangers inked him just days after he had helped BC to a national title, they knew they were get­ting a first-round pick with speed and size. But to be such a dif­fer­ence maker this quickly in the pres­sure cooker of the NHL play­offs, well, this is the type of script you might only find at one of the stage shows that take place at the many nearby the­atres just off Times Square.

In the process, he has become a fan favourite here, not an easy feat when you con­sider this was just his sixth career NHL game. Try imag­in­ing the goose­bumps that must have been sprout­ing all over his 20-year-old body when the capac­ity throng at the World’s self-proclaimed Most Famous Arena started chant­ing his name in uni­son after he had given the Rangers the lead for good.

“It’s kind of crazy,” Krei­der said when asked about what it was like to hear the love being thrown his way by the fans.

“It’s hard to believe (the NCAA title) was only three weeks ago.”

His life has changed oh, so much since then.

In Game 6 of the Rangers first-round series against the Ottawa Sen­a­tors, he scored the win­ner against Sens goalie Craig Ander­son. Now, just two games later, he did it again, this time against a shaky Holtby.

“He has no fear. That’s what I like about him,” coach John Tor­torella said. “The biggest thing is his mind­set. He’s not here to test the waters. He’s here to make a difference.”

He’s done exactly that.

“I don’t think it’s been an over­whelm­ing sit­u­a­tion, maybe aside from the media, just because the way the guys have been, how the front office has been and, obvi­ously, how my friends at home and BC have been. It’s just hockey. It’s the same game I’ve played, just at a higher level,” Krei­der said.

Given the eye-glazing prod­uct these two teams pro­duced on this sun-splashed New York after­noon, con­sid­er­ing this bor­ing exam­ple of non-entertainment “a higher level” might not be an applic­a­ble description.

The two teams com­bined for just 32 shots, with 18 of those pro­duced by Wash­ing­ton. Through the first 31 min­utes of reg­u­la­tion, in fact, the Rangers had fired just five at Holtby.

No mat­ter. New York scored three times on its first 12 shots, includ­ing ques­tion­able goals by Richards and Artem Anisi­mov that found their way through Holtby’s five hole.

“Obvi­ously I wasn’t real happy with (my game),” Holtby said. “It’s a tough game to stay into, mental-wise (because of the inac­tiv­ity) and I didn’t do a good enough job of it.”

Chris Krei­der cer­tainly did. And he was wear­ing The Broad­way Hat after­ward to prove it.

[email protected]

twitter.com/zeisberger

Our sports betting news features unique sports betting articles as well as current sports news compiled from leading wire services. Our sports bet­ting news fea­tures unique sports bet­ting arti­cles as well as cur­rent sports news com­piled from lead­ing wire ser­vices. This news arti­cle was dis­trib­uted by Syn­di­cated Sports news wire and aggre­ga­tion ser­vice, For more NHL hockey news see: Rangers post win over Caps.

Keep cur­rent with our live NHL hockey lines and all of the lat­est NHL bet­ting reports. As well as NHL bet­ting odds, we pro­vide play­ers wager­ing on the Stan­ley Cup Finals, 1st period odds, many NHL hockey propo­si­tion bets along with the daily grand salami.When bet­tors look for NHL hockey odds and any other sports bet­ting odds, Lines­Maker has become one of the most well known resources for online sports betting.

Estab­lished in 1999, Lines­Maker has a an exten­sive track record as one of the world’s pre­miere web­sites for pro­vid­ing sports bet­ting odds as well as a safe, depend­able and sim­ple to use online bet­ting environment.

Related Posts:

• Spurs Have All the Answers in Win Over Jazz
• Mis­takes Prove Costly for Rangers in Game 2
• Rangers Tops in AL, but Rays Not Far Behind
• Rangers Make It a Long Day for Ovechkin
• Yanks Ham­mer Hol­land, Beat Rangers

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•