Kings of New York, or: How the Bolts look bulletproof against the Rangers
So, I'm in Madison Square Garden near the bright lights of Broadway with a holiday hockey crowd as my broadcast colleague Chris Dingman, who's on the Stanley Cup twice starts comparing Tampa Bay to his boyhood heroes while growing up in the 1980s in Edmonton, where the Oilers captured five titles and whose captain Wayne Gretzky just happened to be sitting about 10 rows up at center ice and witnessing the Bolts' embarrassment of New York's Vezina Trophy winning goaltender Henrik Lundquist by scoring five goals plus an empty netter which makes it 14 -- that's FOURTEEN --they've pumped past King Henrik in just three games during the past two weeks to spoil the proud Swede's Thanksgiving turkey and transform the Marty St. Louis "1,000 Career Points Pregame Celebration" into Tampa Bay's very own Garden Party in sweeping the regular-season series from the reigning Eastern Conference Champions, who have either regressed or the Lightning are suddenly exceedingly good, which is the very point Dinger kept trying to make with me during our Sun Sports telecast from ice level while channeling his fond memories of Mark Messier, Jari Kurri, Paul Coffey and goalie Grant Fuhr, who, although he's in the Hockey Hall of Fame, never boasted a gleaming 8-0 record against the Blue Shirts as Ben Bishop now does for the Bolts, who play with the confidence of Daniel Craig in a tuxedo when Big Ben stands between the pipes, regardless if he's before a can't-get-a-ticket 19,204 in sold-out Amalie Arena on Channelside or just a dozen blocks south of Times Square where Bruce Springsteen and U2 were rocking a free street concert in the rain at the same time defenseman Victor Hedman was dishing out assists to teammates who weren't even born the first time the Boss performed "Born to Run" or the Great One was scoring goals like no one had before or since, less you consider Lightning winger Brett Connolly -- still another Western Canada phenom -- who, with fabled No. 99 looking on, unleashed the flaming comet slap shot that got him drafted in the first round as Steve Yzerman's first selection after starting this astonishing transformation five years ago before Connolly's injuries and need to mature dispatched him on more minor-league bus rides than the Hanson Brothers ever endured before Brett finally found acclaim in the same Lightning sweater Marty wore before asking to be traded to New York where, on this night, with wonderful wife Heather and his three young sons along with beloved and proud pop Norm and all standing on the Ranger blue carpet rolled onto the ice of the Most Famous Arena In The World, first Tampa Bay Captain -- and Marty's former centerman --Steven Stamkos followed by the Rangers' "C" Ryan McDonagh presented a succession of gifts including gift wrapped Tiffany silver, a gold plated hockey stick and even a snazzy ping pong table, no kidding, before St. Louis' ex-teammates then took a paddle to the Rangers' backside in a 3-all third period -- putting the Man of the Hour in the penalty box, no less, for slashing and then added to their impertinent behavior by immediately scoring what proved to be the game-winning goal on Connolly's zing-pow power-play shot that Lundquist still hasn't seen despite the fact it took a good two minutes to get Tampa Bay calmed down with all the Bolts' on-ice hullabaloo and way-to-go shouting right in the middle of a stunned Garden as Brett himself bounded halfway up the side glass like Spiderman waiting for his ecstatic teammates to come give him a hug, kind of like what Rangers coach Alain Vigneault needed, try as he might to decipher a way to prevent the Blue Shirts from dropping a game they appeared to have completely under control just minutes before and one evening after he enjoyed a respite by sitting "in the front row" with actor/producer/director/son-of-a-great-husband-wife comedy team/Meet the Parents/Fockers/Zoolander/Night at the Museum/Something About Marty, er, Mary/entertainer Ben Stiller (@RedHourBen), whose 4.6 million Twitter followers eyed a snapshot of Alain and Ben with an unobstructed view of the NBA's Knicks dropping a fifth consecutive game on Walt Frazier Bobblehead Night, which prompts the thought that Stiller is the very personification of Alain as December arrives for, try as he might, Vigneault's team could play Jon Cooper's current club each and every night until June -- or next year's Oscars -- and Tampa Bay is going to win them all unless the referee (who just happened to be Brad Watson, the same fellow in the orange sleeves in Tampa when Marty and Dinger took out Calgary a decade ago) made it fair by taking away a Brett Connolly tip in that would have given him three and a first career hat trick, forcing Connolly to settle for a pair, as did 2014 Calder Rookie of the Year finalist Tyler Johnson and leaving Alain to perhaps admit that New York has no one on its roster with that much runway in front of him, at the age of 24 yet already so savvy and poised that late in the second period, with his team trailing 3-2 and Madison Square Garden roaring like jets leaving LaGuardia as the Rangers survived a five-on-three penalty kill unscathed, New York failed to clear the puck out of their own zone past a gutty-but-gassed Tampa Bay unit which included Anton Strahlman positioned at the line and reaching just far enough to snare an escaping puck with the very tip of his stick (here comes another awkward Stiller-like Vigneault moment) and the former Ranger playoff standout in Stralhman slung the puck to the deep far right corner whence Johnson arrived, took control, swept behind Lundquist's net and found a staked-out defenseman Matt Carle on the dot with more open ice than figure skater Peggy Fleming ever enjoyed during the Ladies' Compulsories beneath that golden roof and boom went the dynamite to win the game 3-3, for St. Patrick's Cathedral uptown has rarely fallen so hushed in that instant when anyone who knows anything about Catholic Mass, or the NHL, or pretty Peggy for that matter, realized the Rangers had just allowed Muhammed Ali off the ropes in Zaire and were about to be George Foreman-ed immediately upon the third period faceoff which produced three unanswered red-light haymakers by Tampa's team Rope-A-Dope including a pas de deux by Johnson, a professionally trained figure skater -- by his mom, no less -- prior to picking up his current more pugilistic profession and applying those on-ice lessons into jackrabbit quickness on steel blades with moves that you know left Wayne from Edmonton in Row 10 recalling his days that are no more, however now clearly are dawning on the Gulf Coast of Florida for a franchise that acquiesced to Marty's admirable and understandable request to raise his family closer to their offseason home in Connecticut, but for consideration in return that now resembles the sum total of Goldfinger's lusts for Ft. Knox considering Tampa Bay scored six times on this night without Ryan Callahan -- the winger swapped for Marty -- getting on the board, nor did the two first-round draft choices, yet to be selected, that Rangers president Glen Sather also sent Yzerman's way, nor did rugged centerman Brian Boyle, who along with Strahlman were important contributors in Sather's most recent run to the Cup Finals since his days with Gretzky and all of Dinger's dream teams, yet whose departure from Manhattan leaves that club, if not dramatically aging, clearly far less Dasher, Prancer, Vixen, Blitzen than Coop's group which has marched to the finest start in the 22-year history of the franchise and owns more goals than any NHL team this side of the same Czech Republic that produced Tampa Bay's other Calder Finalist last spring, Ondrej Palat, who slipped one final shot into an empty net before the then half-empty Garden moments before the final horn to make the score Tampa Bay a half dozen and New York just half of that, as the Bolts shuffled off to Buffalo for a back-to-back with their Atlantic Division rival Sabres in a two-gamer which will bring us ever so close to the completion of the first third of a season the likes of which this state, the Bay area and the club has never seen, for, as Cup Captain Dave Andreychuk would point out -- and he was also in Madison Square Garden for this one -- the rise to immortality by the 2004 brigade was a surprise to many, but this 2015 unequivocally is not for we've come this far without pointing out that the greatest goal scorer of his time, in Stamkos, performed exceedingly well at both ends of the ice without actually scoring and yet his team won decisively, which in past years would rarely have occurred, but on this evening a celebratory mood would allow Stammer, in congratulating with a head bump his goalie in Bishop, to smile as brightly as he did with Marty's family while presenting the nicely wrapped Tampa Bay team gift in wonderful pregame ceremonies, before the Bolts lowered the boom.
