"I think it was a lot us tonight to be honest with you," the New York Rangers coach said after a 3-1 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Second Round at PNC Arena.
Did the Rangers, who are down 3-2 in the best-of-7 series, struggle to get anything going offensively because the Hurricanes were clogging the neutral zone and stopping them from having clean breakouts?
No question.
Is that the biggest reason why they were limited to 17 shots on goal, tied for their lowest number of the season with a game on April 5 against the New Jersey Devils that they actually won 3-1?
Absolutely.
Was the Hurricanes forecheck a reason why the Rangers were pinned in their defensive zone for long periods of time?
Yes.
But none of that surprised Gallant. That's the way the Hurricanes play, especially at home. They clog the neutral zone. They forecheck aggressively. They limit shots. They limit scoring chances. That's their game and they're good at it.
In fact, Gallant said before Game 5 that the Rangers' top players were just going to have to fight through it. They didn't, and that's why instead of being surprised, the Rangers coach said he was "disappointed" that his team had no pushback.
"We weren't quick enough, we weren't strong enough," Gallant said. "We can make excuses about them clogging up the neutral zone and all that, but we just didn't play our game. We weren't competitive enough tonight."
[Complete Hurricanes vs. Rangers series coverage]
Gallant said he saw the Rangers reaching with their sticks instead of finishing body checks, which they did in the first four games of the series. They lost the first two here, but they allowed 49 shots on goal.
The Hurricanes had 34 on Thursday.
"They got beat two games in our building [Games 3 and 4] and we knew they'd come out playing hard tonight, play a fast game and they played really well," Gallant said. "I just didn't think we matched that tonight."
Gallant said he thought the Rangers' looked "tired," but he wouldn't blame that on the fact that they've been playing every other day since May 3 except for a two-day break between Game 7 against the Penguins in the first round and Game 1 against the Hurricanes.
"Well, they did the same thing," he said, referring to the Hurricanes. "But I thought tonight in this series they took advantage of a team that wasn't ready to compete as hard as we should have. It's not that the guys didn't want to compete, it's we looked tired for whatever reason."
Left wing Chris Kreider offered a potential example of what Gallant was talking about when he was asked what the Hurricanes' checking line of Jordan Staal, Jesper Fast and Nino Niederreiter were doing well to limit him and Mika Zibanejad in particular.
"Certainly a handful of plays that I could have gotten them out on the wall," Kreider said. "Made a decision to try to chip it by the pinching defenseman as opposed to maybe chipping it to his left up the middle, but those little details end up having us pinned for a whole shift. Especially against a line like that that plays heavy down low, it eats up clock. Personally, I've got to do a better job along the wall."
