There was deep disappointment throughout him and maybe a level of devastation in the visitors’ dressing room. The first-class Rangers had just been knocked out of the 2012 playoffs by the rookie Devils in Game 6 of the Conference Finals thanks to Adam Henrique’s extra time goal at The Rock.
This marked the end of the Black and Blue Jerseys, which under head coach John Tortorelli outperformed, ending second overall in the NHL with 109 points before surviving the Senators and Caps in a seven-game pair that crippled the team.
There was a demanding training camp. This was followed by a demanding 82 regular season games and one other 20 in the playoffs. They have been grinding it for eight months.
There was silence in the room, which was broken from time to time by a handful of soft-spoken gamers giving interviews to the media.
Chris Kreider was the Guardian for about 10 minutes. Possibly not quite, but you get the point. Kreider was a Ranger for exactly 46 days after signing his first contract on April 10. This was three days after the nineteenth pick of the 2009 draft led Boston College to a national championship in his junior season.
“I do not think I used to be able to appreciate the depth of emotion the guys felt,” No. 20 told The Post ahead of the Hudson’s first playoff battle since the one 11 years ago. “To suggest that it was so emotional for me could be disrespectful to these guys who went through all of it. It was hard for me to handle the level of disappointment when it ended.
“Everybody says there aren’t any passengers in the playoffs, but I jumped on the train after it left the station. I didn’t share the experience of 82 Games, I wasn’t there with them.
The child is a retouch
There was no guarantee that Kreider would make the roster when he joined the team. He skated for the first time in practice on April 11, the day before opening the first round against Ottawa at the Garden. He was scratched from the first two games. But when Carl Hagelin received a three-game suspension for shaking Daniel Alfredsson along with his elbow in Game 2, it opened the door.
Tortorella had three options to fill the hole that the absence of No. 62 would have created. One among them was slow enforcer John Scott. One other was to move hybrid defender/forward Stu Bickel from behind while bringing Jeff Woywitka to the blue line.
Kreider, Scott and Woywitka took part in the warm-up before the third game in Ottawa.
It was, after all, Kreider who got the call, put instead of Hagelin in the front row with Brad Richards in the middle and Marian Gaborik on the right. A robust company for a neophyte.
“I have not played them again,” said Kreider, who played 11-11 in 1-0 win over the Blueshirts through 13 innings. “I raced and rode as hard as I could in every shift.
“I used to be throwing up between periods.”
Rangers’ lane combos were volatile. The more things change and that is it.
“You might see that the guys were used to it,” said Kreider. “If we wanted a goal, he’d move one guy here and one other guy there. If we would been protecting the lead, he’d have taken different guys to different places.
Kreider remained in the roster after Hagelin’s reinstatement as Brian Boyle was eliminated from the series after being shaken by Chris Neil in Game 5.
The showdown with the Senators was as nasty a series as the Rangers played during the pay cap era, the club ultimately prevailing in seven games after losing 3-2 in the series after losing Game 5 at the Garden.
It was Game 6 in Ottawa through which Kreider scored his first goal, giving his team a 3-1 lead in the last minute of the second period with three goals. This became the winner in an eventual 3-2 victory.
The winger played Game 4 with Brian Boyle and Brandon Prust after which Game 5 with John Mitchell and Mike Rupp before teaming up with Derek Stepan and Ryan Callahan for Game 6 and seven.
“I remember pondering at the time that Rupper was the hardest guy I’d ever played with,” Kreider said. “There was nobody like that at college.”
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A memorable mistake
One among the first times Kreider pinched me was in Game 4 of the Second Round in Washington, D.C., three days after the Blueshirts took a 2-1 series lead over Gaborik’s Triple Additional time winner in Game 3.
“I did not have much energy,” said Kreider, who played 26-17 in the match and was not alone amongst his teammates.
With Game 4 scoreless midway through the first period, Kreider attempted to hit Boyle with an out of bounds pass.
“He went low and slow, and the pass was too far,” recalls Kreider. “I went straight to [Alex] Ovechkin’s stick, and he just waved it past Hank [Lundqvist] from about 50 feet.
“I felt terrible. I never wanted to do anything to weaken these guys. I felt terrible after I made a mistake. But then I sat on the bench and thought, “My first NHL assist.” I looked out and I’m on the same ice with Ovechkin a couple of weeks after playing in college.
“After I was on the bench, I wanted to be there, but I used to be like, ‘I’m in the NHL and I’m playing in the playoffs.’
“It still feels unreal”
I’ve at all times believed that the Rangers lost their best likelihood of winning the Cup last 12 months once they lost Game 4 (3-2) in Washington and were drawn right into a second straight seven-game streak.
Had they beaten the Caps in five minutes, they might have had a while to rest and prepare for the Devils, who needed 11 games to advance to the Conference Finals.
As an alternative, they were drained.
Kreider didn’t come off the bench that always in games 4, 5 and 6 against the Caps, going 7:44, 6:57 and 6:06 respectively.
But he reunited with Stepan and Callahan in Game 7 against Washington and the first 4 games of the Conference Finals where he scored in each of the first three contests.
“I attempted as hard as I could, preparing myself to fight Devils each time I got the likelihood,” Kreider said. “But [Martin] Brodeur went from corner to corner to pick up the puck before crossing the goal line to start them off.
“I used to be racing and the puck was gone. Their defense did not have to take many hits. I’ve never seen anything prefer it. He was a one-man runaway.”
Rangers took a 2-1 series lead before losing their last three games which saw Kreider worn out. In the last two games of the series, he played on the right wing according to Richards and Hagelin.
“I remember being surprised at how good the Devils were and the way well they played,” said Kreider. “[Ilya] Kovalchuk, he was simply unbelievable. [Zach] Paris was so good.
Eighteen years after Brodeur suffered heartbreak in an epochal seven-game defeat to the Rangers in the 1994 conference semi-finals, the goalkeeper twisted history in his own way.
Now, 11 years later, Kreider is trying to turn things around.
Forty-two players competed on this series. Kreider is the only survivor.
“Coming the way I did and playing this 12 months has been an incredible experience,” said Kreider, who has recorded five goals and two assists in 18 games. “It was a gale. Everyone treated me so well.
“There are occasions when it still feels unreal.”