from Bruce Arthur of the Toronto Star,

...in the first three games, the bounces mattered. Los Angeles had more bounces in Games 1 and 2, and in Game 3 the Kings scored on a deflection off a defenceman’s skate, a deflection off a Ranger leg, and a puck that came back to a stick off a defenceman’s skate.

The Rangers kept talking about bounces, luck, hockey gods, and got two bounces that led to goals in Game 4, plus those two pucks that wouldn’t cross their goal line.

And the hockey gods, as coach Alain Vigneault said, were back.

Few players have total control over what the puck does, every time. They can control getting a clean shot off, and sometimes they know where it’s going to go. But remember the goal Patrice Bergeron scored to tie Game 7 against Toronto in 2013? He let it fly from the blue line and it travelled into exactly the right spot, through a space about half the size of a mail slot. He didn’t mean to. He never even looked at the net. He just shot it. There was a screen. He happened to find the hole.

Is that luck? Yes, and no.

Part of hockey has always been trying to wrestle the game out of chaos, and once a certain amount of the chaos has been screened out, the luck — however it can be controlled — can loom larger.

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