WINNIPEG, Manitoba — The Rangers’ first game of a four-city Central Division swing could not have gone better under the circumstances. 

Despite a depleted lineup that featured a couple of minor-league mainstays and a heap of penalties, the Rangers grinded their way to a 4-1 win over the Jets on Sunday night at Canada Life Center. The win pulled the Rangers even with the Penguins at 77 points for second place in the Metropolitan Division, with a game in hand and two more wins. 

Head coach Gerard Gallant opted rolled with 11 forwards and seven defensemen for the first time this season, surprisingly scratching Julien Gauthier, who had played the previous 14 straight games. Greg McKegg was also not available due to personal reasons, which Gallant said would sideline the forward for this road trip. 

That drew Libor Hajek into the lineup for the first time since Feb. 1, while Gauthier and Morgan Barron were in street clothes. 

Maybe the hope was that Hajek could showcase himself to potentially up his trade value as the March 21 deadline nears. Maybe there are serious concerns over parts of Barron’s game in the front office. Maybe … something else is up. 

“This time of the year and coming on the road, Libor hasn’t played in a while and he’s played good when he was in there,” Gallant said of his decision to go with seven defensemen. “So we just thought we’d manage some minutes coming into the first game of the road trip. It went OK. Nobody loves playing seven D, but I think it worked out fine.” 

So the Rangers’ bottom six featured a couple of AHLers in Jonny Brodzinski and Tim Gettinger, while second-line center Ryan Strome received a healthy dose of double-shifting. Gallant admitted dressing that kind of structured lineup was not something he does very often. 

“We thought about it [Saturday] a little bit and we all agreed that it was a good idea,” he said. “We’ll see, we’ll see. It’s not something I do very often, but we’ll see where it goes.” 

Still, the power play was firing on all cylinders, Chris Kreider continued his charge toward 50 goals with his 37th and 38th of the season and goalie Igor Shesterkin tied his season-high with a staggering 45 saves. 

The Rangers did struggle to stay out of the box for much of the game, taking three penalties in the first, two in the second and another in the final frame. On their fifth power play of the night, the Jets cut the Rangers’ lead 2-1 off Nikolaj Ehlers’ goal at 13:45 of the middle frame. 

Shesterkin had to come up with 17 saves in the third period, while Kreider and Mika Zibanejad padded out the Rangers’ lead. But the Russian netminder made it look effortless, as usual. Improving to 10-0-0 in his career when making 40-plus saves in a game, Shesterkin also became just the second goaltender since 1955-56 to win each of his first 10 or more games when making that many stops. 

Asked if he felt physically up for the rest of this road trip, on which backup Alexandar Georgiev will presumably get at least one start, Shesterkin said he will play every night if he has to. 

At the end of the second period, however, Shesterkin lingered in goal for a bit before slowly making his way to the tunnel. He said he just wanted to relax for a second. 

But doesn’t he prefer to have a heavy workload to keep his mind in the game? 

“I like it, but today I’m tired a little bit,” he said with a smile.