Rangers beat Preds to snap winless streak
Relief wasn’t a word the Rangers wanted to use Saturday afternoon after finally earning at least a brief respite from the largely disappointing start to this season. One would expect a certain level of uneasiness around a team with playoff expectations owning just one win in its first eight games, but here is what J.T. Miller offered after the Rangers snapped a five-game winless streak Saturday afternoon against Nashville with a 4-2 victory at the Garden.
“We didn’t feel as tense as it seems,” Miller said. “We feel good about our game. The last two or three games I think we’ve done a lot of good things. We haven’t come out on the right side, but it’s not as tense as everybody may (think) on the outside here.”
Make no mistake, the Rangers (2-5-2) needed this win in the worst way, desperately needed a better start and got it by taking a 2-0 lead into the first intermission, just their second multi-goal lead of the season.
Even now with four points in their last three games, the Rangers still have a long way to climb up the division standings. They felt despite the ultimate results, they made progress in post-regulation losses to the Penguins and Islanders, and they hope Saturday will be a “springboard,” as Kevin Hayes put it.
“I feel like we’ve been taking small steps this week,” said Henrik Lundqvist, who made 23 saves, three of which came on a Nashville power play in the third period after a dubious delay-of-game call against Brendan Smith for the Rangers’ net coming off its moorings after Smith was hit by Scott Hartnell.
“Against Pittsburgh we came back in that game and we could’ve easily won that game. Islanders same thing, we could’ve easily won that game. So we’re taking steps. And then, I think when you start getting confidence too, it’s easier to find ways to win games even when you’re not playing great. So far we’ve had to play pretty well to win, these two wins we have, but moving forward I hope we can continue to build this confidence. That’s what you need in a long season. You need to find ways to win games even when you’re not playing that well, and that’s something we have to work on and get better at obviously early on here.”
Lundqvist’s efforts helped the Rangers finish 5-for-5 on the penalty kill after they had surrendered a power-play goal in six of their first eight games. They got a power-play goal of their own late in the first when Chris Kreider scored his first goal of the season to put the Blueshirts up 2-0.
A superb effort by Hayes to beat Matt Irwin up the right wing and finish at the net put the Rangers up 3-1 in the second. Jimmy Vesey’s empty-netter sealed the win. The Rangers had just 15 shots, three each in the second and third as they tried to protect their lead.
“This was coming,” Lundqvist said. “We’ve had a couple of games now where we’ve been close and it was just a matter of time. Finally, we get the two points here, take a deep breath and then we go after another two points on Monday.”
Alain Vigneault scratched Adam Cracknell and dressed seven defensemen. Nick Holden entered to play with Brady Skjei while Tony DeAngelo played about 80 percent of his 5:20 on the power play.
Though the Rangers didn’t seem like a distressed group, Lundqvist admitted flat out that Saturday’s game was bigger than usual for a mid-October affair.
“I think it’s important that you understand the situation we’re in,” he said. “Even though it’s October, we can’t let it slide. We can’t. It’s gonna be too hard in the end. So we need to focus on each game here and try to really make the most of it. So this was a big one.”
And there are more to come.
MINOR MOVE
The Rangers made a minorleague swap with Detroit Saturday, trading winger Matt Puempel for righty defenseman Ryan Sproul. Puempel had nine points in 27 games for the Rangers last season but didn’t make the team out of camp. Sproul, 24, had seven points in 27 games for Detroit last season.