hearts of steal

The Rangers arrived at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday to play a hockey game they desperately needed to win. But what happened earlier in the afternoon in the city they call home gave their meeting with the Golden Knights a different kind of importance.

There was a pregame moment of silence held for the victims of the lower Manhattan terror attack that killed at least eight people, but it had been on the Rangers’ minds long before then.

“It was emotional for me before the game,” goalie Henrik Lundqvist said. “I talked to the group a little bit about the importance of this game. For me, my family’s in that area every day. Coming to the game, not knowing if they were safe or not, it was not a good feeling.”

The Rangers wanted to provide a reprieve for at least a few hours Tuesday night and they delivered one in dramatic fashion, coming back from a two-goal deficit in the third period to beat the Golden Knights 6-4.

Mika Zibanejad, who assisted on both goals that wiped away the deficit, scored the winner with 5:47 left in the game. He flung a power-play wrister on net with Chris Kreider screening Golden Knights goalie Maxime Lagace and lit the lamp to send a roar through the Garden.

“It was bigger than the two points today,” Zibanejad said. “We were trying to play for the whole city and all the families involved.”

The Rangers (4-7-2) had to balance the emotions of the day’s events while also turning their focus to the ice. They played a sluggish first two periods while the Golden Knights (8-3-0), in the sec-

ond night of a back-to-back, had the quicker step.

But the Blueshirts came out with a purpose in the third period and their furious rally — during which they scored four consecutive goals — allowed them to come out on top.

“There was a lot of emotion in our dressing room before the game tonight with what happened today in Tribeca,” coach Alain Vigneault said. “A lot of our players live around there. … I heard a couple guys talk about it before. They were talking about, ‘We gotta put this together, we gotta get going here.’ They were aware of it. It was an emotional moment, what happened today. I thought guys handled it well and we were able to come back.”

The Rangers began their third-period comeback on an early power play. Kreider came flying down the left side and finished off a cross-ice pass from Zibanejad to trim the deficit to 4-3

Minutes later, Zibanejad created again when he intercepted a Golden Knights pass in front of the Vegas net. He slipped it to Pavel Buchnevich, who had an empty net to work with and eas- ily tapped in the equalizer with 11:34 to go.

“On a day like this, where maybe hockey is not that important, we wanted to give everyone a good feeling,” said Mats Zuccarello, who scored to tie the game at two in the second period.

Lundqvist, meanwhile, pitched the shutout in the final 20 minutes. and finished with 30 saves. It had been a frustrating night for him in the early going as three of the four goals he allowed came off rebounds and the last on a penalty shot.

But he also made a few big saves that kept the game from getting out of hand. His teammates returned the favor, piling up the goals to win for the first time this season when they trailed entering the third period.

“When you play the game, obviously you don’t think about what’s going on in the city but it keeps coming back to you,” Lundqvist said. “Going into the third, all our focus was to leave everything out there and see how hard we could push it. … On a very emotional and tough day, I feel like we did a good job here tonight.”