PITTSBURGH — The most extreme matching I’ve ever seen was done by Pat Burns and the Devils in Games 3, 4 and 6 of the 2003 Stanley Cup finals at Anaheim.
The New Jersey coach often would split his defense pairs for offensive zone faceoffs in order to hedge against the personnel sent over the boards by Mike Babcock, coach of the team then named the Mighty Ducks. Burns then would bring one of his defensemen back in front of his bench in the defensive zone for offensive-zone faceoffs in the first and third periods, so he could make the instant change and reunite one of his tandems.
Keeping the puck in the zone was secondary in those instances for the late, great Burns, who won that Cup while employing a system that was even stricter than anything Jacques Lemaire ever tried to impose on the Devils. New Jersey could make it work because that type of intricate matching had become a way of life for the team.
That is not the way it is with Gerard Gallant. That has never been the Rangers’ head coach’s style.
“I’m not a big fan of that,” Gallant said on Friday, before the Blueshirts chartered to western Pennsylvania in advance of Game 3 of their playoff series against the Penguins on Saturday. “I can’t say I’ve been a real hard matchup guy, no.
”I know a lot of coaches do it but I’m not a big fan of that. I want my players to feel as if they can play against those [top] guys.”
Gerard Gallant and the Rangers take on the Penguins in Game 3 on Saturday night. Jason Szenes The Rangers were blessed by inordinately good health on their back end throughout the season, in which their top two defensive tandems — Ryan Lindgren-Adam Fox and K’Andre Miller-Jacob Trouba — were intact for 78 games. Fox missed three games with an upper-body injury before the All-Star break and Fox, Lindgren and Trouba all rested in the season’s penultimate contest.
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That good fortune allowed Gallant to split matchup assignments between the top units, which had evolved into Matchup Pairs 1A and 1B. That good fortune ended when Lindgren sustained or aggravated a lower-body injury issue during the Game 1 loss on Tuesday. That injury has sidelined him.
Justin Braun, the 35-year-old obtained from the Flyers at the trade deadline, has stepped in for Lindgren. On Thursday, when the Rangers evened the series with a victory in Game 2, the Miller-Trouba pair got 10 minutes against Sidney Crosby’s line while the Braun-Fox combo got about three minutes. Each pair was on for four defensive-zone faceoffs. Each pair was on for a goal against.
That one was at the Garden, where Gallant had the last say. That of course switches to Pittsburgh coach Mike Sullivan, whose team has the last change at home for Games 3 and 4. The matchup minutes distribution may look a lot different in these two games.
“I’m not worried about that, to be honest with you,” Gallant said before Game 3. “But we always talk to our players about, ‘Know who you’re playing against, know who’s on the ice.’
“When you’ve got that puck in the D-zone, you don’t have to make that extra fancy pass when that big line is on the ice. They’ve got more than the Crosby line, obviously, but you don’t want to give them second and third chances. So make sure you manage the puck well.”
Braun came to the Rangers credited with 100 games of playoff experience. He averaged 21:23 of ice time per playoff game in 2015-16 for San Jose, when the Sharks went to the final before losing in six to the Penguins. A righty, who had been on his natural side throughout his 12-year career, Braun had played seven of his eight games for the Blueshirts on his off-side.
Sidney Crosby battles Justin Braun.USA TODAY SportsThat is where he is with Fox, with whom he had played a sum of 2:55 during the season before sharing 12:30 of ice Thursday in the 5-2 victory.
“Brauner has been around a lot and he’s a smart player,” Fox said. “I’ve played with Lindy so long that we have a little bit of comfort reading off of what we’re going to do, but besides the opposite-handedness, they both do a good job reading off me and trying to know when I’m trying to go.
“They’re both simple, smart players so it’s easy for me to play with both of them.”
The Rangers have adjustments to make against Crosby and linemates Jake Guentzel and Bryan Rust, who have combined for four of the club’s five even-strength goals and five of their sum of six goals — all but the Game 1 triple-overtime winner, which was scored by Evgeni Malkin.
They’ll have to make them in these two contests on the road, in which Gallant’s preference not to play the Match Game will be tested.
