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Tuesday, December 7, 1999
Taylor-made!
Rangers' plugger gathers his head after Gauthier check to dump Flames
NEW YORK -- Tim Taylor couldn't feel his face, his feet, much of anything really, just three hours earlier.
He was knocked out cold.
But, in the best tradition of revenge, he coldcocked his transgressors last night at the Garden.
Almost decapitated by a Denis Gauthier elbow/shoulder just 30 seconds from the drop of the puck, Taylor returned to score the game-winner 32 seconds into overtime as the New York Rangers cruelly beat the Flames 3-2.
Calgary surrendered the tying goal with 36 seconds remaining in regulation with Ranger goalie Mike Richter on the bench in favour of a sixth attacker.
On a harmless-looking rush right off the top in OT, Taylor slapped a skipping puck behind Fred Brathwaite to end Calgary's wonderful, unbeaten overtime (6-0-2) run.
"I don't usually score those kinds of goals," said Taylor afterwards. "Theo. Gravy. Petr. They're the guys that can. Just luck, I guess."
Of the Gauthier hit, he said: "They have to look at that. I don't complain after hits but that ... he clearly came in with his elbow."
Gauthier, a force all evening, couldn't disguise his disappointment.
"It's heartbreaking, especially after what Theo said about us, about him not having much of a supporting cast in Calgary ... while a pile of bull. I think we showed tonight that we're not a bunch of second-raters. We play hard and we play to win.
"They were all yelling at me. Their bench. Their coach. Good. If they're thinking about me, they're not thinking about the game. In the third period, they calmed down, stuck to their game plan and got what they wanted. We got a point and we move on to Montreal."
The Fleury article, clipped from yesterday's New York Post, had been enlarged and taped up in a prominent position in the various cubbyholes that comprise the visiting dressing room at Madison Square Garden.
The quotes read, in part: "I don't see how there could be more pressure on me here than in Calgary, with the supporting cast I had there. I hate to say it, but it was a situation where if I didn't score, the team lost. It was basically all on my shoulders."
The insult, while probably innocently, thoughtlessly uttered, was nonetheless stinging -- althought not as stinging as the tough loss.
Adam Graves equalized with Richter on the bench, redirecting a lovely cross-ice pass from one-time bad boy Alexander Daigle in the final minute.
The goaltenders -- Brathwaite and Richter -- were especially surperb in the third period. Brathwaite stoned Mathieu Schneider from point blank range, then dropped the paddle of his stick behind him to deflect away the puck as Graves tried for the short side.
Not to be outdone, Richter leapt back to cover the post and deny Val Bure's quick pick-up-and-stuff off the backboards, then gloved down a shorthanded 2-on-1, Cory Stillman sending Martin St. Louis in cold, as a backchecking Fleury barreled into him.
Brathwaite blamed himself for the result.
"It's frustrating, to give up a goal like that with 30-whatever seconds remaining to tie it, and then I let in a soft one for them to win."
An endless parade -- longer than the kids queued up to see the Christmas tableaus in Macy's window -- to the penalty box in the second finally caught up with the Flames. They didn't manage a shot until the 15-minute mark.
On their third shot, Bill Lindsay centred for a Jarome Iginla one-timer and they had a 2-0 lead at 18:42.
All seemed well ...
But a Bobby Dollas minor at 19:35, followed almost immediately by a too-many-men call put the Rangers on a 5-on-3, and a faceoff win by Michael York over Clarke Wilm led to Mathieu Schneider's point-shot goal -- Graves providing the screen -- with 19 ticks left on the clock.
Gauthier certainly arrived with his game face on, when he nailed Taylor early on.
Amazingly, Taylor would return after a spell in the dressing room.
Gauthier was a marked man from that moment on, but certainly didn't shy away any, lifting Fleury into the boards with a shuddering check that drew the inevitable crowd.
The residue adrenaline from a suffocating powerplay chance by the Flames, hemming New York in its zone for virtually two minutes, led to the only goal of the first period, with former Ranger Marc Savard providing the goal.
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