There is always room for improvement, and this getaway game before the All-Star break had quite a few points to be brought up after the Rangers return from a week-long hiatus. But the underlying truth remained as it has been over the past six weeks: The Blueshirts are just continuing to find ways to win.
This one came as a 3-2 overtime victory over the Senators on Tuesday night at the Garden, allowing the vacation to start after a moment when this team showed wins can come in unflattering ways.
“I’ve said before — they can’t all be Picassos,” coach Alain Vigneault said. “This was definitely one of them. This game is about finding ways to win, finding ways to win when you’re not at your best. That’s what we did.”
They did it by way of an outstanding performance from the line of Chris Kreider, Derek Stepan and Martin St. Louis, in conjunction with some timely goaltending from Henrik Lundqvist. The game-winner came 2:55 into the extra frame when Stepan made a great no-look pass toward the net, where Carl Hagelin tipped it past Craig Anderson for a release of emotion.
“He saw me go to the net,” Hagelin said. “We made eye contact.”
Stepan was on top of his game all night, just five days after he was forced to sit out a game in Boston with an upper-body injury. But he returned for the next night’s win in Columbus, and scored twice in Sunday’s triumph in Pittsburgh. Maybe the Rangers (27-13-4) have cooled off a bit, but by winning 16 of their past 19, they’ve vaulted into second place in the Metropolitan Division, tied in points with the Penguins but ahead in regulation-and-overtime wins, and five points shy (with two games in hand) of the first-place Islanders.
Kevin Hayes beats Senators goaltender Craig Anderson for a second-period goal during the Rangers’ eventual 3-2 overtime victory Tuesday night at the Garden.N.Y. Post: Charles Wenzelberg“We knew it’s an important game, and we knew coming off two big wins on the road, we might have a letdown,” said Lundqvist, who finished with 32 saves. “It took us a while to really get going.”
That it did, with a scoreless first period when the Senators (18-18-9) were all over them, forcing turnovers but failing to capitalize. And even though the Rangers got out to a 1-0 lead midway through the second on a rebound goal from Kevin Hayes, it was soon equalized by Erik Karlsson — and then supplemented just 63 seconds later with a power-play goal from Milan Michalek, giving Ottawa a 2-1 lead after two.
“We had a really good feeling in the room going into the third,” Lundqvist said. “We talked about not losing this game and really leave everything out there. I thought we played really well in the third and gave ourselves a chance to win.”
Lundqvist described the feeling as “just knowing that we had more to give,” and it came to fruition 2:42 in with the tying goal from Kreider, taking a great touch-pass from Marc Staal and burying one past Anderson’s blocker.
“When he plays like that,” Lundqvist said of Kreider, “with his speed, it’s hard to stop that guy.”
It’s been hard to stop the Rangers as a whole recently, and their hope is that the break won’t be too much of a disturbance to their increasing momentum. The schedule resumes Tuesday at the Coliseum against the Islanders, when very quickly it will be clear the break is over and the real grind has begun.
“We’ll take the two points,” Vigneault said. “We’ll go on the break and re-energize and come back and get ready for a tough second half.”
