The New York Rangers fell six wins shy of a Stanley Cup despite leading the Eastern Conference Finals 2-0 at one point – but when he spoke to the media in his end-of-season press conference Monday, head coach Gerard Gallant is proud of what his team accomplished in his first season at the helm.
"Did I want to win and be selfish and win my first Stanley Cup? Yes, and I’m sure a lot of players down there did too. But I’m real happy,” Gallant said. “I’m leaving here today, going home proud of our season.”
He of course spoke about Ryan Strome’s injury (a pelvis injury that may require surgery), Chris Kreider’s leadership ("He played strong, played hard. He was fun to be around."), and the playoffs as a whole ("nothing came easy") – but the burning question, even two days after the Game 6 loss, was why Kaapo Kakko did not play in that deciding game.
Unfortunately, Gallant wasn’t budging on his non-answer.
"When we sit down and talk about our lineup, that’s what we do," Gallant said when asked about his Game 6 lineup. “We wanted to win the game. We love the kid. He’s a good young player, but we just thought the best lineup was trying to win that game.”
There was wonder if Kakko was injured and the team was being coy, or if there was a disciplinary measure, or whatever it was – but Gallant only said “nope” when asked about it on Saturday, and then only revealed Monday that it wasn’t performance-based, per se.
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"It’s not about his game. It’s about the team game and the lineup,” Gallant said. “Like I told you, in most of the games we had some game-time decisions of certain people, so that’s the way we made it up. If this guy played, or this guy played, that’s how we went into the game. We weren’t sure how the lineup was during the warmup.”
The “Kid Line” of Kakko, Filip Chytil, and Alexis Lafreniere were a force this season, but got less than eight minutes of ice time in Game and were split up in Game 6, with Kakko scratched, Lafreniere playing with Mika Zibanejad and Frank Vatrano, and Chytil starting with Kreider and Barclay Goodrow.
With so much possible flux coming this offseason, it would seem that keeping the “Kid Line” together could be a boost for the Rangers in 2022-23, but Gallant wouldn’t commit to that, either.
“Yeah, that’s a possibility but again, they could be on all three different lines on different positions,” Gallant said. “They could be a real good line together and also we could move different guys in bigger roles and that’s going to be part of it, too. They’re all going to be key players for us next year, the three of those kids for sure.”
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