Why Rangers captain sought ‘no-brainer’ fight with his Stars counterpart
J.T. Miller got a good view of Jamie Benn’s hard hit from behind on his New York Rangers teammate Vladislav Gavrikov late in the second period at American Airlines Center on Saturday and didn’t like what he saw. So, the Rangers captain didn’t hesitate dropping the gloves with his Dallas Stars counterpart.
There wasn’t much to the actual fight, but the reason behind the respective captains throwing down was clear.
“I just think all good teams have that. It’s not really a decision. It’s just a pack mentality type of thing,” Miller explained postgame. “There’s going to be hits that happen in the course of the season that you don’t like. It’s a fiery game, it’s supposed to be this way, it’s been part of the game for a long time.
“There’s an automatic thing to it, you don’t think. We’re all really close in here, so, yeah, it’s a no-brainer, and we’ve got a lot of guys in here doing it. It’s awesome to see.”
The fight at 18:17 of the second period didn’t quite alter the course of the game, which was scoreless at the time. The Rangers came out of it with a power play, since Benn received an extra minor penalty for boarding Gavrikov, and that became part of a 5-on-3 advantage when Dallas’ Colin Blackwell was assessed a high-sticking minor 36 seconds after the fight.
The Rangers failed to score, and Vincent Trocheck’s double minor for high-sticking at 19:51 short-circuited the two-man advantage. A pair of Jason Robertson goals in the third period sunk the Rangers in a 2-0 loss, their 10th shutout defeat of the season.
Miller standing up for Gavrikov wasn’t a one-off for the Rangers,. One of the hallmarks of their success down the stretch of this otherwise disappointing season is the amount of fights they’ve had. Will Cuylle had a couple tilts, not so unexpected. But Adam Sykora also had one, and so did fellow rookie Noah Laba.
Then, of course, there was the goalie fight two weeks ago, when Igor Shesterkin put a surprise whipping on Jacob Markstrom of the New Jersey Devils.
“I think our team’s done a good job of sticking up for each other,” Miller noted.
Instead of fracturing under the weight of a lost season, the last-place Rangers pulled together, especially late in the season. There’s something to be said for that.
“This is one of the closest groups I’ve been on, and things like that are important,” Adam Fox said Saturday. “Obviously, you don’t want J.T. fighting all the time, but obviously it’s good. He was willing to get in there, obviously a dangerous hit. That’s what good teams do, and tight teams do, they stand up for each other. And it’s good when your captain’s doing things like that.”
