DENVER – It won’t be long until Ryan McDonagh is back in the lineup, coach Alain Vigneault said Thursday morning at the Avalanche’s Pepsi Center, but it may be a while until people stop talking about the Alex Burrows hit that injured New York’s top defenseman Tuesday night in Vancouver.
Former NHL player and long-time referee Paul Stewart accused the Rangers in a Thursday post on hockeybuzz.com of being “passive” in not responding to Burrows’ hit on McDonagh, reacting “like they barely had a pulse.” That echoed many fans’ distaste for Vigneault appearing to tell agitator Dan Carcillo on the bench Tuesday night not to retaliate.
Stewart’s assessment, though, ignored Dan Girardi’s right-handed swing to the back of Burrows’ head immediately after the hit and assumed the Blueshirts are going to let Burrows’ antics slide – which they may not.
“I think (Girardi) got in there pretty quickly, but things happen so fast on the ice sometimes,” fourth-line agitator Derek Dorsett said. “You have a split second to make a decision. Also in the last five minutes if you get an instigator penalty, it’s an automatic one-game suspension, so that goes into it. But you remember who hit him. You definitely know what player it was, and sometimes you just throw it in the memory bank for a later date.”
That’s a clear indication that next season’s first Rangers-Canucks matchup could be an ugly one, even if Vigneault does not coach with the same pro-fisticuffs mentality that John Tortorella employed while in New York.
“They had two physical players going at a defenseman, going back for the puck,” Vigneault said Friday when asked if he saw something wrong his former Vancouver player’s actions. “Sometimes staff happens.”
The coach, rather, reserved any scathing comments for his own Rangers forward J.T. Miller, 21, whom he sent back to the AHL on Wednesday. Miller, the franchise’s 15th overall pick in the 2011 draft, played in only two of four games in his latest call-up and clearly is not in good graces with his coach for a variety of reasons.
“He just hasn’t earned the right to be at this level on a regular basis,” Vigneault said. “He needs more commitment. There needs to be more commitment from his part on the ice and off the ice, and until there is, he hasn’t earned the right to be at this level on a regular basis.”
“It’s part of any young player going through the process of being an NHL player,” he continued. “You’ve got to figure it out, and hopefully he will, and when he does, we’ll have a good player, and if he doesn’t figure it out, he’ll be a good minor-leaguer.”
Miller has one more season remaining on his entry-level contract and could become a valuable trade asset this summer if the Rangers decide he won’t mature in their system.
On the other hand, Vigneault expressed confidence in – and hope for – young defenseman John Moore. Moore, 23, has returned from a March 21 concussion to replace McDonagh (day-to-day, undisclosed left shoulder injury) in the final match of the Rangers’ four-game road trip.
Patrick Roy’s Avalanche entered with the seventh-best home record in the NHL (25-11-3), while the Rangers came in with the most road wins in the league (25-14-0).
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