Rangers2

Canadiens2

MONTREAL – So maybe the Rangers weren’t left for dead a week ago yesterday in Boston. Maybe they were just five feet under and not six. Maybe they still have a chance to dig themselves out from the grave they seemed content to have jumped into.

But if the Blueshirts are going to dig out so they can see daylight, they really can’t afford to let too many more games and points get away as they did here last night. For against an unimposing Montreal team all but devoid of distinguishing characteristics, the Rangers failed to lock up a match they had led for 39 minutes and were forced to accept a 2-2 draw when the Canadiens took advantage of a Mike Richter puck-handling (handling?) gaffe midway through the third.

“I think we might have been a little guilty of trying to win 2-1 instead of trying to create chances to get the third goal,” Mark Messier, stoned on a goalmouth backhand by Jose Theodore with 3:11 to go in regulation, said. “By perhaps trying to sit on it we left ourselves vulnerable to a bad bounce, which is what happened on the tying goal.

“Obviously we’ll take the point and the positives out of this game, but it’s one we would have liked to have won, for sure.”

The draw extended the Rangers’ unbeaten streak to four (3-0-1) following the nine-game winless skid (0-7-1-1) that culminated with last Saturday afternoon’s half-hearted loss to the Bruins. And while the team remains winless on the road since Thanksgiving Eve, going 0-10-2 in what is now the longest such streak for the franchise since the 1963-64 season, they did move within six points of the eighth-place Hurricanes, with whom they open a home-and-home in Carolina tomorrow night.

“These two games coming up against them are going to be building blocks,” said Ron Low. “We have to go in and play our best. If we do that, I’ll be satisfied regardless of the result. We have to play our best.”

The Rangers were anything close to their best last night. “Decent,” is the bull’s-eye way Low assessed it. The team did remain attentive to preventing odd-man rushes – Valeri Kamensky twice busted butt to get back from deep in the offensive zone and prevent scoring opportunities – and was reasonable (in comparison to a couple of weeks ago) in its down low coverage, but had little offensive spark. Fact is, for the first time since Jan. 12, 1997 – during their last win against the Devils, of all games – the Rangers did not earn a power-play opportunity.

Low, vigilant lately of the fatigue factor, rolled four lines over for 60 minutes except when the Rangers were shorthanded twice late in the second period. Even when Mike York went out with bruised ribs after two, the coach continued to practice egalitarianism by rolling over all his forwards while double-shifting Petr Nedved in the middle. Montreal, only four points behind the Rangers, scored just 20 seconds into the match when Sheldon Souray’s left point shot following deficient defensive coverage off a faceoff hit Brian Savage’s skate and skidded past Richter. But the Rangers held their composure well. They held it well because Richter came up with a couple of dandy point blank saves before the seven-minute mark, first on Eric Chouinard’s one-timer from the left wing, then on Xavier Delisle all alone in front.

Down by just the goal, the Rangers knotted the match at 10:59 when Jan Hlavac took a headman feed from Nedved and then proceeded to undress Theodore with a breakaway backhand. Hlavac then gave the Rangers the lead at 13:58 by slipping a routine left wing shot through the goaltender’s five-hole.

Playing conservatively, the Rangers couldn’t quite make their nursing game work, not when Richter drifted behind his net to play a shoot-in, but fumbled the puck and was left to watch helplessly when Eric Landry found Delisle alone in front for the gimme at 10:02.

“When I couldn’t come up with the puck off the boards I should have pinched [Landry] but he was going too fast,” said Richter. “When I couldn’t get the puck or hip-check him, I was obviously only a spectator.”

So the Rangers left with a point; not two, but not none, either. They’re breathing from underground, trying to make the climb to daylight. Their next two games will go a long way to determining whether they will only be spectators for a fourth straight year during the playoffs.