Have the Rangers turned the corner? 

That is the question as they carry a season-high four-game win streak into their next contest against the Maple Leafs, who are second in the Atlantic Division and third in the NHL, on Thursday at Madison Square Garden. Either way, the Rangers have made up some ground in a tight and competitive Metropolitan Division, where they entered Tuesday separated by one to three points from the Islanders, Hurricanes and Penguins while also trailing the leading Devils by nine. 

To say the Rangers have fully rebounded from their underwhelming start might be a reach. But the team mentality has seemingly shifted to a much simpler goal each and every game: Get in, get the two points and get out. It doesn’t matter how the Rangers make it happen, just that it does. Quite frankly, their season depends on their ability to continue this adopted mindset. 

“I hope it’s turning a little bit,” head coach Gerard Gallant said after the Rangers beat the Devils in overtime, 4-3. “Because we didn’t have much luck in the first part. It was the bad, the good and it was OK after that.” 

The bad was the Rangers’ lethargic opening 20 minutes Monday night, when the Devils pulled ahead 2-1 by the first intermission. The good was their two-goal second period when they outshot the Devils 13-11 and tapped into the fast game they’ve been trying to play all season. The OK was the minimized mistakes in the third period to actually get to overtime, where the Rangers barely had any puck possession before Filip Chytil scored on their first shot to secure the victory. 

It’s the knack for finding ways to win that has been missing from this team. Closing out games and opponents has been a problem — one that has greatly influenced its confidence level and team morale. Last season’s Rangers scoffed at multi-goal deficits. Especially earlier on in this campaign, they looked demoralized by them. 

Before this four-game stretch, the Rangers had only won one game in overtime on Nov. 1 against the Flyers. Each of the other five times they reached the extra period or the shootout, the Rangers lost and had to settle for a single point. That does something to a team’s psyche, as does the five multi-goal leads they’ve blown. 

The only cure for such a state of mind is winning. The Rangers can only hope that these past few games, no matter how they ended up in the win column, will act as a springboard for the club to turn its season around. 

“We had a little bit of that last year in finding games where maybe we weren’t supposed to win or maybe we didn’t have all the bounces,” said K’Andre Miller, who assisted on the tying and winning goals against New Jersey. “But we still found a way to stick with it and get those dirty wins, I guess. We’re doing a great job of that right now on this little streak, finding what’s working and sticking with it.” 

The Rangers are skiing like a racecar coming around a bend. They’ll either get back on all four wheels and make it to the finish line, or flip over and crash.