Month: April 2019

Off he goes Monday, Henrik Lundqvist beginning his journey from New York to Slovakia in quest of gold for Sweden in the World Championships that will commence with a match against the Czech Republic on May 10 in Bratislava.

It will mark the King’s fifth appearance in the tournament and the 11th time he will compete in an international event wearing the Tre Kronor. Sweden is the two-time defending champion, having won with Lundqvist in nets in 2017.

“I feel a sense of pride every time I put on the yellow and blue jersey,” Lundqvist wrote in an email exchange with The Post. “I always have and I always will.

“It’s also a great opportunity to have a fun challenge and enjoy it with a great group of guys.”

The season, of course, ended in despair for the goaltender, who carried the Rangers through an unanticipated strong first half before it all collapsed on him the final two months. The tournament, Lundqvist believes, will point him in the right direction for 2019-20.

“The last time I went, it helped me prepare for the next season,” Lundqvist wrote. “I’d been planning to start skating in May to work on things, no matter what. This will be a more fun way for me to work on my game.”

Jack Hughes is only further whetting the appetite of the Rangers and Devils.

The projected No. 1 pick in the upcoming NHL draft passed Alex Ovechkin for the most points in IIHF Men’s World U18 Championship history with three points in Team USA’s 5-2 win over Canada in the bronze-medal games in Ornskoldsvik, Sweden on Sunday. He had a goal and two assists.

“This is a pretty cool tournament, pretty cool event,” Hughes told NHL.com. “I’m lucky to be able to participate in it twice. It’s been two pretty good runs. It’s really cool to be on top of that ranking.”

The Devils own the top pick in the 2019 draft and the Rangers select second.

Hughes’ performance gave him 32 career points (14 goals, 18 assists) in 14 games, one more point than Ovechkin put up in 2002-03 for Russia. The 17-year-old’s 20 points (nine goals, 11 assists) in the current tournament is the second highest total in the event’s history and one point shy of tying the mark set up Nikita Kucherov. It is the most points ever by a U.S. player.

“It [stinks] we didn’t end up with gold,” Hughes said. “I still think we’re the best team in this tournament. I think a lot of other people think that. To come out here, it’s kind of a gut check. That kind of shows our character, shows how good we are. To come out here and beat the Canadians like that, it was a lot of fun to win our last game like that.”

When it’s close to a mirror image looking back from the other bench, it could be the smallest things that end up making the biggest difference.

From all accounts, the Islanders and Hurricanes are very similar teams about to take each other on in the second-round playoff series that begins with Game 1 on Friday night at Barclays Center. Neither team is loaded with high-end talent — they each disposed of one of those in the first round, with the Islanders sweeping the Penguins and the Hurricanes eking out a double-overtime win in Game 7 against the Capitals on Wednesday night.

Both groups are predicated on a team-first concept. They both play tight defense. They both have offensively capable back ends and both have deep groups of forwards. They have both gotten timely goaltending from unexpected netminders.

So what, then, to make of this matchup between two teams so few people expected to be here? Well, at least one feeling seems to be the consensus.

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“We’re going to expect a very, very hard series,” Islanders goalie Robin Lehner said after Thursday’s practice on Long Island. “It’s going to be hard to suffocate them, and they’re going to have a hard time suffocating us. It’s going to be a lot of physical play. This one is going to be interesting.”

The Islanders will be coming off a 10-day break since they beat the Penguins in Game 4 last Tuesday in Pittsburgh, while the Hurricanes are riding that high of having just dispatched the defending Stanley Cup champions. But how much will the rest help the Islanders, or has it turned to rust? And how burned out exactly are the Hurricanes after what has been pretty much nonstop playoff games for the past three months?

And what will eventually be the difference?

“It’s like every series, it’s going to be small margins of error,” Lehner said. “It’s going to be who’s sticking to the details, who’s making that extra play, and sticking to the system. I feel like this is going to be a very tight, tight series. I think patience, emotions, all those things, everything is going to play a role here.

“The small details, everything is going to count in this series.”

The Islanders were a terrific defensive team this season, the first under head coach Barry Trotz. If they had a deficiency, it was in how much they scored.

But in the four games of the first round, they got outstanding performances from Jordan Eberle (four goals, six points), Mat Barzal (five assists), Josh Bailey (three goals, four points) and Brock Nelson (three goals). With that type of depth scoring, they can continue to focus on playing defense first and being offensively opportunistic.

“I think everybody believes in each other in here,” Nelson said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s Jordan or me or Barzy or Anders [Lee], it’s different guys on different nights that step up. I think that’s been one of the biggest reasons we got to this point — all year, we had different guys on different nights step up. Looking for more of the same.”

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The dynamic of this series would have been quite different if it was Trotz facing the Capitals, whom he coached to a Stanley Cup victory last year. Instead, it’s just two hard-working teams flying under the radar, seeing which one can outlast the other.

“I just think [the Hurricanes] have been a really good team all year, especially in the second half, they were grinding it out every night and playing the same way, playing for each other, and doing all those things,” Trotz said. “It doesn’t surprise me. They weren’t going away easy all year, and they weren’t going away [in Game 7]. They did a great job.”

But now it’s on Trotz and his team to make the Hurricanes go away for the summer if they want to be the side of this mirror image that emerges into the conference final.

“It is a grind,” Trotz said of the playoffs. “It’s 2¹/₂-month absolute test of mind and body. If you feel like you have a weakness and you’re not going to be able to do it, you won’t.”

It’s a small number, just 12.8 percent, but it’s a number that Barry Trotz has already helped increase and hopes to do so again.

The Islanders coach knows exactly how difficult it is for a team to come back from a 2-0 hole in a best-of-seven series, just 52 teams out of 405 in that position have done so in the history of the NHL. But Trotz was behind the bench for one of those 52, just over a year ago when his Capitals lost the first two games of the first round to the Blue Jackets but ended up coming back to win the series — and then the Stanley Cup.

He now faces it again, as his Islanders lost the first two games of the second round at home to the Hurricanes, two very tight games at Barclays Center that came as a shock to the system following a first-round sweep of the Penguins and a subsequent 10-day layoff. So Game 3 in Raleigh, N.C., on Wednesday night is not a must-win, but it’s not far off.

“You sometimes have to understand that there’s a little bit of a process that you end up going through,” Trotz said Monday on Long Island during his team’s day of rest. “We’re going through some adversity. I don’t think we went through any in that first series. We don’t want to look back. And there’s always tests.

“I said there’s an unseen hand or something will come up that will test you a little bit. It’s how you respond. I said to them, ‘Hey, we’re going to Carolina to win two games. Plain and simple.’ And you can’t win two unless you focus on the first, so we’ll focus on the first and go from there.”

The direness of the situation is that only four teams out of 212 (1.9 percent) have ever come back from being down 3-0, one of them the 1975 Islanders. That is not the situation these Islanders want to be in, especially not in Carolina where the fans can smell blood in the water and are full-throated behind their “bunch of jerks.”

“We know we’ve dug ourselves a little hole and there’s some urgency to get back in the series,” Trotz said. “You fall down 3-0, it’s going to have to be a real epic-type thing because you don’t want to dig yourself too far. But it’s a race to four, and they’re up two.”

There is almost no question the long layoff hurt the Islanders most in terms of mental focus. While the Hurricanes were grinding out a first-round series that needed double overtime in Game 7 against the Capitals, the Isles were just trying to replicate game-like situations in practice while mixing in days of rest.

They knew it might take a while before they got back into full-bore playoff mode, and the hope is the positive side of the layoff will come later in the series, when Carolina is worn down and the Islanders are relatively fresh.

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One thing that is certain is they need to score more than just the one goal they had through the first two games — that one coming on a Mat Barzal pass that was deflected in by Hurricanes defenseman Jaccob Slavin. They peppered the posts with pucks in Game 2, and could never take advantage of backup goalie Curtis McElhinney coming in for the injured Petr Mrazek early in the second period.

The two teams are very similar in playing a defensive style, and the only times the Islanders have really struggled in their first year under Trotz is when they get away from that patient, plodding game. The hope for them is the situation won’t force any uncharacteristic risks and their dedication to that style will eventually pay off with a return of crispness.

Just like it did for Trotz a year ago.

“You’ve just got to respond and you’ve got to dig in. We have another level.” Trotz said. “There’s some players on our team that have another level of focus, another level of commitment — all those things that’s necessary to win. You can’t have any passengers. We’re going to have to go in there fully committed, and if we do that, it gives ourselves a chance to have success.”

The call, which not only wiped out the one and only puck the Islanders were able to put past Petr Mrazek in Friday’s second-round opener at Barclays Center, but also sent Anders Lee to the penalty box for goaltender interference at 17:07 of the second period, was a debatable one. And so Barry Trotz and his staff debated whether to challenge it.

“It was tough, you can’t challenge the penalty, and at first it looked like [Lee] was shoved into the goalie and then maybe not,” the Islanders coach said. “At that point in the game, 0-0, I didn’t want to lose the timeout in case something else were to come up later for a challenge, so we didn’t.”

So Mat Barzal, who popped in the puck from just outside the crease, did not score. He was not alone. Indeed, when the night ended on a put-back of a well-placed carom off the back wall by the Hurricanes’ Jordan Staal at 4:04 of overtime, it was 1-0 on the scoreboard and in the series for the Rock Candy Canes.

There were spasms of chances in this game that hardly served as advertisement for what is largely a no-name matchup. There was little in the way of sustained offense from either team, one back on the ice a bit too quickly after a seven-game first-round that ended on Wednesday and the other back on the ice with a bit too much rest following its opening sweep that concluded April 16.

If this was an internal battle of rust versus rest fought by the Islanders, well, they lost. Yes, they hung with Carolina, and no, they didn’t get blown out, but boy, this was one that could have been played in December without much notice. Pace came and went. Golden chances were few and far between. Creativity was at a low ebb.

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“They play tight, we play tight,” said Jordan Eberle, the magic dust that coated his stick blade against Pittsburgh apparently having evaporated during the break. “There’s not a lot of room out there. That’s the way it’s probably going to be.”

Oh, please, no. Mrazek, who has a 121:47 shutout streak, made a nifty glove save on a Josh Bailey breakaway with 6:02 to go in the first period and denied Eberle from the left circle early in the second, but was hardly under siege. Robin Lehner, whose shutout streak of 111:10 ended with Staal’s goal, made a handful of noteworthy stops, the most memorable coming with the left pad on a Greg McKegg backhand breakaway midway through the second.

But this was hardly an old-time playoff goaltending duel. Perhaps it would have been if the netminders had faced a greater degree of difficulty, but no. Mrazek and Lehner were the best players on the ice, but largely by default.

The ice was bad and pucks were bouncing. The Islanders made uncharacteristic blunders with the puck, notably the one by Cal Clutterbuck while his team was on the rush immediately before his poor decision and errant play allowed Carolina to rush the other way for what became the winner.

The Islanders and Canes had never before met in the postseason, not even when the Hurricanes were Whalers in Hartford. The teams share no memories beyond the 64:04 played in Game 1 in Brooklyn. We will go out on a limb and suggest these won’t last a lifetime.

No series can be lost in Game 1, unless that is, you’re the Lightning and blow an early 3-0 lead. The Islanders are obviously not done. But in order to turn rust into diamonds on a Stanley Cup ring, they must be sharper, crisper and more purposeful. The Islanders weren’t exactly bad, but they never truly asserted themselves. They did not elevate from Round 1 to Round 2.

“We can’t get hung up on one game,” Lee said. “For the most part we played the way we wanted to.”

But they didn’t play as well as necessary in to in order to take Game 1. They didn’t play with enough authority to plant even a seed of doubt into their opponents. Hence, the Islanders face their first bit of adversity, albeit mild, in the tournament. A response is necessary Sunday afternoon in Game 2.

There is no debate about that.

Robin Lehner’s life has gone through a remarkable metamorphosis in the past year: from rehab to piling up trophies.

The Islanders goalie was named as a finalist Saturday for the Vezina Trophy as the league’s best goalie, one day after he was named as a finalist — and more than likely winner — of the Masterton Trophy, for perseverance and dedication to the game. At the end of the regular season, Lehner and fellow Islanders goalie Thomas Greiss shared the Jennings Trophy for backstopping the team that allowed the fewest goals during the regular season.

Last summer, Lehner was in rehab for substance abuse — and he also was dealing with a new diagnosis of bipolar 1 with manic phases along with ADHD and post-traumatic stress disorder. When he came out of rehab, Lehner said he had about eight or nine teams seriously interested in signing him. When he and his agent decided to be transparent about his situation, it got narrowed down to two.

“The one team that I went and saw,” he said, “it didn’t go well at all.”

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But the Islanders took the leap and signed the 27-year-old Swede to a one-year, $1.5 million deal. He has delivered a return no one could have imagined, finishing with the best regular-season save percentage (.930) in Islanders history, along with the third-best goals-against average in the league (2.13).

That terrific season earned him a place alongside the Lightning’s Andrei Vasilevskiy and the Stars’ Ben Bishop as a Vezina finalist. But as the Islanders, after sweeping the Penguins in the first round of the playoffs, wait for the Capitals-Hurricanes series to finish to find out who they play next, Lehner wanted the focus to be on breaking down the preconceived notions about mental illness.

It was more than a little gratifying that the Vezina is voted on by NHL general managers, the ones who decided to pass on Lehner because of his off-the-ice situation.

“This is the thing with perception. It’s not like I’m a special case that needs someone holding my hand,” Lehner said. “They’ve been incredibly supportive and open-minded and non-judgmental and all that stuff — that’s what I mean with how good this organization has been. The big thing they’re helping me with on a day-to-day basis is they help me with my meds. It’s not like you have some of your mental issues and now we have to do a bunch of things. That’s not what’s happening. They’re helping me with a few things, but the biggest thing is to not be judgmental.”

Lehner likened his situation to someone dealing with an injury. Now that he knows the nature of his illness, he knows how to treat it. That is exactly what he did all during this year when his life and career were revived.

“That’s what is powerful about that whole thing. Hopefully, not just GMs, people in general, they stop looking at people in that light, because — me with bipolar, for example. It’s never going to go away,” Lehner said. “It’s easily treatable if you have the right people. That’s it. I know if I go into depression or I go into mania, I know now, my wife knows. Maybe I need to fix something, tweak something.

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“And I’ve had that throughout this whole season. I’ve had bad days. I’m always going to have that. It’s like everyone else on our team, you’re going to have bad days. Mine get a little worse, but I know how to handle them now, and it’s nothing to be scared of. It’s the same with the recovery and addiction. It’s big in all sports.”

After Lehner first told his story in a first-person piece published online just before training camp, Islanders fans have been hugely supportive, chanting his name at every opportunity. It’s clear how much that means to him as he continues to rack up the recognition for such a special season and year.

“That’s what’s good about this, it shows it can be done with the right people, the right help,” Lehner said. “Look how these fans have embraced that. They’re amazing. They’re a part of saving a lot of lives, these fans what they’re doing right now. They certainly helped me on my journey, saving my life. It’s just the beginning. Hopefully we can all keep going with this.”

There were a handful of “must-win” clichés thrown around the Islanders locker room Saturday afternoon, looking ahead to Game 2 of their second-round series against the Hurricanes the following day at Barclays Center. But losing a 1-0 overtime contest in Game 1 on Friday night has hardly created any panic.

“From experience, I do remember the team I was part of last year that lost the first two games,” coach Barry Trotz said, referring to his Capitals team from a year ago that lost their first two games of the postseason before going on to win the Stanley Cup. “If that were the case, then it’d be the best-of-two. That’s not the case. It’s a race to four.”

Most players described the mood as “fine” and “happy.” It was hard to tell this was anything different than a regular season practice, quick and upbeat. But the Islanders know going to Carolina down 2-0 in the best-of-seven series might not be the most ideal situation, and they need to get over their 10-day break following the first round and the change in home venues from the Coliseum to Brooklyn.

“Carolina, they’re good man,” Mat Barzal said. “Obviously they beat Washington, gave them a lot of problems. [Friday] night, they gave us some problems too. We just have to make a few adjustments and get our intensity up a little bit.

“Shaking off some rust [Friday] night, timing and whatnot. Getting back used to this rink, haven’t played here in a while. Just have to come in [Sunday] prepared, playing our game. It’s a big game for us, we have to win.”

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Forward Leo Komarov and defenseman Scott Mayfield missed practice due to “maintenance.” Trotz said he expects both to be ready to play on Sunday.

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Winger Jordan Eberle started this postseason red-hot, scoring a goal in each game of the four-game sweep of the Penguins in the first round. That run ended in Game 1 when the Islanders were shut out, but he wasn’t too concerned the long break affected his personal momentum.

“I felt good [Friday] night, still created a little bit, had a couple chances,” Eberle said. “I think this series is going to be so much different as far as Pittsburgh [when] we scored quite a few goals. This series is going to be a lot tighter. Everyone knows that. They play defensive, we play defensive. That’s how the games are going to go. 0-0, into overtime. That just has to be how the series is one and lost.”

There was no complaining from Devon Toews that the puck he kicked into the goal didn’t count, even though it would have been monumental for his Islanders.

Hanging on to a 1-0 lead with 14 seconds left in the second period, the swift-skating defenseman had a backhand shot stopped by Carolina goalie Curtis McElhinney, and as the rebound came back to Toews below the goal line, he ended up kicking it under McElhinney’s pad and in. The call on the ice was no goal, and it stood after a short review.

The Islanders would then give up two goals in the opening 65 seconds of the third period and lose, 2-1, going to Carolina for Game 3 of this second-round playoff series on Wednesday night down 2-0 in the best-of-seven contest.

“I didn’t even see it,” Toews said. “I was just trying to kick it back to my stick and it ended up in the net. I don’t know the ruling or anything. I trust they made the right call, so I guess it was no goal.”

Per the NHL release, the officials deemed Toews “used a distinct kicking motion to propel the puck into the Carolina net,” resulting in no goal, according to Rule 49.2. If it was a deflating moment, the Islanders didn’t admit it.

“We were still winning the game,” coach Barry Trotz said. “It’s a funny rule. He was below the goal line, trying to put it towards the front of the net. It’s the right call.”

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When Hurricanes starting goalie Petr Mrazek left 6:27 into the second period with an injury, backup McElhinney entered. That also meant there needed to be an emergency goalie, provided by the home rink, ready in case McElhinney got hurt.

That happened to be Todd Scarola, who played club hockey at Stony Brook University on Long Island and who has twice had surgery to remove brain tumors. He did not get in the game.

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There was no update from Trotz on forward Cal Clutterbuck, who had to be helped off the ice at the end of the game while dealing with what seemed like a back injury.

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Carolina lost defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk after he was hit by Clutterbuck on the first shift of the game and seemingly injured his left shoulder. Coach Rod Brind’Amour said that van Riemsdyk is “not coming back anytime soon.”

The Hurricanes also lost forward Saku Maenalanen to an upper-body injury, and Brind’Amour didn’t have an immediate update.

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The season for AHL Bridgeport ended Saturday, but there was no immediate plan to call anyone up as part of the practicing “black aces.” Trotz said that team — including offensively gifted winger Josh Ho-Sang — would go through its exit interviews over the next few days and then a decision would be made on who might come up.

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The Islanders got their first power-play goal of the postseason on home ice when a Mat Barzal pass was deflected in at 13:17 of the first period. They had previously been 0-for-9 at home. The man-advantage overall is now 3-for-19 (15.7 percent) in the playoffs.

Turning the world over to big tech hasn’t done much for our democracy, but that likely won’t deter the NHL from knee-jerking to a botched call in the playoffs by Dan O’Halloran by instituting some sort of coach’s challenge for disputed major penalties.

O’Halloran is living proof of the adage that everything old becomes new again. His mistake (aided and abetted by fellow ref Eric Furlatt) was giving Vegas’ Cody Eakin a major and game misconduct for his faceoff cross-check across Joe Pavelski’s chest late in Game 7 against San Jose, coming five years after he blundered in Game 2 of the Cup finals by allowing a Los Angeles goal to stand despite clear and convincing evidence Henrik Lundqvist had been victimized by goaltender interference.

Two seasons later, the NHL adopted the coach’s challenge on goaltender interference and offside plays. And if you’re suggesting video review would have saved the Rangers in 2014, well, that is incorrect, because weeks after the playoffs had ended, O’Halloran told New York officials that watching the replay had reinforced his opinion the goal should have counted.

When you have an official doubling down on a mistake, video review proves no salve because the league will reflexively and by statute defer to the original call if there is any gray matter. Though review has corrected some errors in judgement over the past four seasons, others have been allowed to stand, and maddeningly so. Seriously, does anyone honestly understand why that Auston Matthews goal was allowed to stand in Game 5 in Boston, but Anders Lee went to the box for 2 minutes on Friday against Carolina?

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These calls are subjective. Unlike tennis’ pristine system, NHL video review simply adds another layer of subjectivity to the process. Everyone involved in these games wants to get it right, but introducing additional eyes to the decision-making mix does not guarantee perfection or anything close to it. And an original bad call reinforced by a hazy review decision undermines the integrity of the process more than just a botched decision on the ice.

Bill Foley, the owner of the Golden Knights, is fuming and is on record stating he will ask to expand video review at the next Board of Governors meeting. Perhaps the owner should be less miffed at the officiating crew and more upset by the response of his team that devolved into chaos in allowing four goals within 4:01 of San Jose’s major power play to blow a late 3-0 lead before briefly recovering in advance of their elimination overtime defeat.

But how would expanded video review work? Would coaches be allowed to challenge only when majors are called, or would coaches be allowed to challenge perceived major-worthy offenses that were originally called as minors or major-worthy calls were missed, entirely?

Under expanded review, would the Maple Leafs have been able to challenge the lack of a penalty call against Zdeno Chara for his sucker-punch to John Tavares’ face during a fracas at the end of the second period in Game 7? If the video review board found that a penalty indeed had been missed, could a minor have been assessed or only a major? What if, in taking a second look, review officials spotted another uncalled infraction? Would that be remedied?

What about double minors for drawing blood? Would those calls be reviewable, too? If not, why not? What about when a guy is tripped coming out of the zone, turns the puck over and a goal-against is the immediate result? Would that become reviewable, or only majors and missed majors? Are we talking about opening up every call for review or just in the playoffs?

If there is adoption of a so-called Super Challenge Rule, under which each coach gets one review per game of any call (but does that include non-calls?), why limit it to one? Is there any doubt that there are nights when officials make multiple mistakes? Why would a coach have to accept one egregious decision in the first period to ensure he would be in position to challenge an even more hideous call in the third period?

You know how on those very rare occasions the two referees and two linesmen huddle and an incorrect penalty call is reversed, even though there is no mechanism in the rule book that explicitly allows for it, and people applaud the officials for getting it right? Why, then, don’t they do that all the time if the object is to get it right? Why don’t linesmen routinely seek to overrule referees on obvious mistakes of both omission and commission?

The offside review has become a boondoggle and everyone knows it. Expanding video review will become a boondoggle and everyone knows that, too. The solution to the problem, though, is simple:

Stop assigning Dan O’Halloran to work in the playoffs, permanently, not simply for the remainder of this year’s tournament.

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If Joel Quenneville had not accepted the job in Florida to coach the Panthers and were still available, would Mike Babcock still be employed by the Maple Leafs or is it set in stone that the Marlies’ Sheldon Keefe is Toronto general manager Kyle Dubas’ man when the time comes?

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And would anyone three years ago have dared to suggest that John Tortorella would have a longer shelf life and be more adaptable than Babcock, who has not gotten out of the first round since 2013 and whose teams have won three series and lost nine this decade?

Finally, Columbus over Tampa Bay was a stunner, all right. But it barely registers on the upset scale when measured against the Canadiens and Ken Dryden (with six games of NHL experience) taking out the swaggering, record-smashing, animalistic, defending Cup champion Bruins in seven in 1971.

Not. Even. Close.

LAS VEGAS — The owner of the Vegas Golden Knights said Thursday a senior NHL executive phoned him to apologize for a penalty called during Game 7 of his team’s loss to the San Jose Sharks.

Owner Bill Foley said the call came the morning after Vegas lost 5-4 in overtime Tuesday night to end the first-round series. Foley said at a news conference the call came from an executive who is “about as senior as you can get,” but he did not want to identify him.

The play in question was a major penalty on Cody Eakin of the Golden Knights that Foley described as “infuriating.”

The owner said the executive admitted it was a “bad call” and the league did “acknowledge” it. Foley added that the apology made him “feel a little better after that.”

Foley said he was sitting with injured forward Erik Haula in a suite at SAP Center when Eakin cross-checked Sharks captain Joe Pavelski in the chest with 10:47 to play. Paul Stastny bumped Pavelski as he fell to the ice, where he was knocked out and bleeding on the ice.

The officials conferred on the unreviewable play while a dazed Pavelski was helped to the locker room with a towel pressed to his head. Eakin was assessed a 5-minute penalty for cross-checking and a game misconduct. The Sharks scored four goals on the ensuing power play.

Series supervisor Don VanMassenhoven said the major penalty was given because the cross-check caused a significant injury.

“The game was ours, it was over, 3-zip,” Foley said. “We were looking, saying ‘all we gotta do is play some defense, play defense and stay out of the box.’ Within 30 seconds, five-minute major. It wasn’t a penalty. Painful.”

San Jose coach Peter DeBoer said Pavelski is listed as day to day but is not expected to be cleared for Game 1 of the second-round series against the Avalanche on Friday night.

DeBoer downplayed the league’s call to Foley.

“I haven’t gotten many of their calls where they made a mistake,” DeBoer said. “There were a couple earlier in that series where I would have appreciated a call. We’re past that. We’re on to the next opponent now.