RANGERS’ MISSION: TAKE 5 IN OTTAWA
OTTAWA — There is an abstract feeling the Rangers have utter control of their second-round series against the Senators going into Game 5 on Saturday afternoon at Canadian Tire Centre. It’s a feeling drawn not strictly from what has happened on the ice.
With each team having held serve in its own building and the best-of-seven tied, 2-2, it should feel a lot more even than it does. But the Blueshirts have not only played better in the first four games — trailing for only 4:11 of total game time and leading for 149:56 — but they have displayed a preternatural poise and professionalism that stands in stark contrast to their opponent.
“I think we’ve got good leadership,” coach Alain Vigneault said after his team’s optional practice in Tarrytown on Friday before departing for Canada’s capital. “I think when we’ve been faced with adversity, we’ve handled it well. We just focus on what we need to do.”
Often the Rangers’ cool demeanor and penchant to turn the other cheek has left previous postseason defeats feeling like emotionless disappointments. But to see the Senators lose their cool at the end of Game 4 was a far cry from watching a team trying to send a message as it goes home — as amateurish as that notion may be. It was more like watching a collective mental breakdown in real time as Dion Phaneuf fought Brendan Smith, as Bobby Ryan tried and failed to engage Dan Girardi in a fight, and then, as the topper, as Kyle Turris swung at Tanner Glass and get rewarded by Glass pummeling him as they fell to the ice.
After the game, the Rangers took it in stride, saying they can answer the bell when necessary. The following day, Vigneault dusted off an old favorite catchphrase to make sure they don’t get sidetracked in the quagmire of roughhousing.
“We’re going to focus on being disciplined in our game, not just in the way we’re playing, but whistle-to-whistle,” he said. “We’re going to stay real focused and not get involved into any stuff after the whistle. We’ve been very disciplined that way, and we’re going to continue to do that. They’re hard-fought games and that’s what we’re expecting.”
It was that same immediate focus that allowed the Rangers not to get distracted by the two gut-wrenching losses that opened this series in Ottawa. It’s also the reason they were able to claw their way back with two comprehensive 4-1 victories at the Garden.
Heck, with the Rangers holding only a 3-0 lead going into the third period in Game 4 on Thursday, Ottawa coach Guy Boucher told the best player in this series, Senators captain Erik Karlsson, to stay in the locker room to rest his weary injured left heel. Boucher also used that moment to replace starting goaltender Craig Anderson with backup Mike Condon for what he said was the purpose of getting Condon some work. “If you would have told me we’d be here, second round, 2-2, against the Rangers, and we’re going home to play a two-outof-three, I don’t think anybody here wouldn’t have taken it,” Boucher told reporters at the team’s New York hotel Friday morning. “So if we’re not positive, we’re not very bright.”
Before the series even started, Boucher was pumping up the Rangers and how good they are, saying what a small margin of error his Senators had in order to give themselves a chance to win. It was all rhetoric to shift pressure, but it unquestionably just rolled right off the Rangers’ collective back.
The Blueshirts have been here before, and they have been part of all these mind games with both the post-whistle scrums and the not-so-veiled verbal messages from opposing coaches and players. They know how to remain poised in all situations, and that might be their biggest positive attribute.
They might not win this series, but they certainly won’t lose it by being panicked or distracted.
“We won two in a row, but it doesn’t matter now,” winger Mats Zuccarello said. “They’ve been playing well at home, so we have to play better. We all know that. Obviously we’re happy that we won two games, but those games mean nothing if we don’t pull off a good away game.”