Martin St. Louis is doing just about everything for the Rangers this season. He has a team-leading five assists and is tied with Rick Nash with a plus-6 to lead the Blueshirts.
Still, through seven games, St. Louis has only one goal.
But if the inability to find the back of the net through the Rangers’ first seven games is bothering the 39-year-old, he’s not showing it.
“I don’t judge my performance on goals and assists,” St. Louis said after the Rangers practiced in Tarrytown on Wednesday. “I try to be honest about how I’m playing. The results will be there.”
St. Louis’ confidence is born out of experience.
He has scored 371 goals in his career and had 29 in just 62 games with Tampa Bay last season before being swapped for Ryan Callahan.
Though St. Louis didn’t do much to justify the trade during the rest of the regular season — when he scored just one goal in 19 games — he made his presence felt in the playoffs, when he scored eight times and provided significant leadership during the Rangers’ run to the Stanley Cup finals.
The team’s recent success, with Tuesday’s comeback victory over the Devils giving the Rangers three straight wins, has made it easier for St. Louis to ignore his stats.
“It’s tough to score goals in this league,” St. Louis said. “Players are smart and goalies are good. I’ve just got to keep pushing, I guess. I feel good.”
He also has been around long enough to understand the ebb and flow of a long season.
“Do I try to score every game? Yeah,” St. Louis said. “Sometimes you end up more of a disher and sometimes you’re the scorer. It just varies with the way the game is played. I try to create for my teammates. I try to score when I get my chances. You just play the game.”
In the meantime, he’ll take the Blueshirts moving up the standings, thanks in part to overcoming a two-goal deficit in the third period against the Devils on Tuesday before winning in overtime.
“Any comeback win like that, when you finish it off, is a confidence-builder, a character-builder,” St. Louis said. “We focus on finding ways. I think that’s what we’ve done here the past few games.”
And despite the layoff until their next game on Saturday in Montreal, St. Louis is hopeful there will be a carry-over effect once they get back on the ice.
“Definitely confidence-wise, it carries into the next game, no doubt,” St. Louis said. “We learned something about ourselves. … You’ve got to play the score and the clock and I thought [Tuesday], we stayed with it. We pressured more being down.”
Like the Rangers, the Canadiens have won three in a row. They have lost just once this season heading into Saturday’s Eastern Conference final rematch, which St. Louis already is looking forward to.
“I’m gonna have a lot of friends at the game,” St. Louis said. “The playoffs there last year, I’ll remember forever. I don’t know how I’m gonna feel.”
