WASHINGTON — There have been a lot of moments that felt like this, with the cramped visitors locker room at Verizon Center spilling over with Rangers whose exhaustion is hardly veiled under smiles and excitement. Maybe it was a little more subdued after Friday night’s 3-2 win over the league-best Capitals then it would be, say, in early May.
But the satisfaction of this performance is also one that goes beyond a regular-season victory.
“League’s best in their own barn,” said alternate captain Derek Stepan, who scored the game-winning goal 17 seconds into the third period. “You don’t complain about those two points.”
The Rangers (38-21-6) had quite a few worries coming in, most notably the fact that starting goalie Henrik Lundqvist was suffering from neck spasms and watched the game in street clothes. Lundqvist suffered the injury during the team’s disheartening 4-1 loss to the Penguins on Thursday night in Pittsburgh, so this second leg of a back-to-back already was daunting, made even more so by a handful of Rangers suffering from a flu bug going around — and looking like it on the ice.
So it was backup Antti Raanta between the pipes when the Capitals (47-13-4) started pushing in the third. But the players in front of him were doing the same thing they have done so many times in this building — defending a lead, getting the puck out, and barely hanging on for dear life as the clock slowly bled down.
“We had a tough night [on Thursday],” said Raanta, who finished with 32 saves after he had played the final 20 minutes in Pittsburgh with Lundqvist receiving treatment. “We discussed before the game that everybody needs to show up; play aggressive hockey, put our bodies on line.”
Which leads to another staple of this locker room scene — defenseman Dan Girardi walking out of the trainers’ room with a score sheet.
“Three blocks!” he said, incredulous of his stat line. “I had that on one shift!”
He was only half-kidding, because the Rangers are well aware that victories in this building come with painful sacrifice. For all the joking that is done, there was an immense pride in this group and how they responded in the face of adversity against a Washington team coach Alain Vigneault had called “by far the best team in the NHL this year.”
So then to the man with the Broadway Hat barely pulled over his big Boston head — Keith Yandle, in the back corner of the left side of this room, where the defensemen are and where the hat normally ends up. Yandle played a team-high 24:19. He was a monster on the left side and picking up the slack for Marc Staal, who was sluggish after missing Thursday’s game because of illness. Yandle was on the puck all night, limiting his penchant for turnovers with great stick position and jump in his legs that belies the grinding schedule.
It helped, also, that Yandle let fly a power-play point shot in the split second Capitals goalie and front-runner for the Vezina Trophy, Braden Holtby, was trying to look around a screen. That gave the Rangers a 2-0 lead late in the first period after Jesper Fast had opened the scoring 5:47 in by again going to the front of the net.
“I knew it was going to be more playing against a second line, and a bigger role,” Yandle said. “It was one of those things where I love the challenge.”
The challenge came when the Capitals got a helpful call from the NHL review booth in Toronto, overturning a no-goal when they somehow saw the puck cross the goal line under Raanta from an angle not available to the media. The goal went to Jay Beagle, cutting the Rangers’ lead to 2-1 midway through the second. Before the middle frame ended, T.J. Oshie scored a power-play goal that tied it, 2-2, going into the third.
But then captain Ryan McDonagh made a great play to set up Stepan for the winner, and Raanta could laugh when asked how long the third period felt.
“It was 20 minutes, I think,” he said.
Yeah, just as if it were a normal win. It wasn’t. At least not for March.
