SUNRISE, Fla. — The feel-good story of the night took a hard left turn 59 seconds into overtime.
That was when Blake Wheeler, playing for the first time since his right leg went the wrong way and he crumpled to the Madison Square Garden ice on Feb. 15, found himself chasing Aleksander Barkov up the ice after the Rangers turned the puck over.
Wheeler, too slow to catch up, didn’t have much choice other than to take a penalty, which he did — hooking Barkov.
Thirteen seconds of game time later, the Panthers were celebrating a 2-2 draw in the series after Sam Reinhart’s one-timer won Game 4 for Florida, 3-2 in overtime.
Wheeler, who had worked so hard for the last three months to get back on the ice, who had watched and celebrated his teammates for the first 13 games of this run, for whom it surely meant so much to be back with the Rangers, was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It was as cruel as it gets for the former Winnipeg Jets captain who came to New York on a one-year deal to chase a first Stanley Cup title.
“It was a tough spot for him to be in,” coach Peter Laviolette said. “There was a lot of heat on, a lot of pressure. It was more what they did, I think, than him doing something.”
Wheeler ended the night with 9:18 of ice time, minutes in which it was clear at times that he was getting up to speed, but with which Laviolette was happy as a whole.
“I thought he came in and there was times where [Barclay] Goodrow, [Matt] Rempe and Wheeler put it in the offensive zone and they actually stayed down there,” Laviolette said. “Able to occupy some time and spend some minutes down there. First game back in a while. I thought he was good.”
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Given how the Rangers have handled Filip Chytil’s return from injury, managing his workload by sitting him for Game 4, it would be a surprise to see Wheeler in the lineup on a nightly basis the rest of the way.
That Wheeler managed to play at all on this stage is, on its own, a testament to his determination.
“I think it speaks more to the character of the guy. Just the type of person he is,” captain Jacob Trouba said. “Not everybody would take the three-month journey to work their way back in that situation. That just speaks to the character of the man, of who he is. We saw how hard he worked the past three-plus months to come back and play and contribute to our team.”
That Wheeler was on the ice, in that spot, to take that penalty, is a twist of the knife that is tough to stomach.
