Points matter even at early stage of race
IF the playoffs started today … you wouldn’t be preoccupied with buying gifts for Hanukkah, Christmas or, for that matter, finding that perfect Festivus pole.
Which is to say the playoffs do not commence for another four months, so it is of little concern the Blueshirts do not occupy a tournament berth as of this snowy December weekend.
“I check the standings every couple of days, but I don’t obsess over it,” Marc Staal said following the Blueshirts’ 5-2 Garden victory over the Devils on Saturday. “At the same time, I know how hard it is to make up ground or put teams away, so there is an urgency on getting points and especially against teams in the division.”
You may believe the Penguins, Capitals or Blue Jackets ultimately will miss the playoffs. If you do, that makes one of us. Which means that in order to qualify for the tournament, the Rangers will have to pass either the Islanders or Devils while holding off Metro Division teams already behind them and the fourth-place team in the Atlantic.
There is little that separates the three locals. The Devils, who have exceeded all expectations, currently are in third place with 36 points in 29 games. The Islanders, who have won one of their past five (1-3-1), hold the first wild-card spot with 35 points in 29 games. And the Rangers, 7-2 in their past nine and 13-4 in their past 17, are on the outside looking in with 34 points in 29 games, one point behind the Penguins with a game in hand.
Again, though, it is December in a league in which the losers’ point has a funhouse mirror effect on the standings, so best not to fret over a tiny differential. Still, contact lost is difficult to regain, which is why there was some manner of urgency to the Blueshirts’ task following Friday’s inadequate performance in a 4-2 defeat to the Capitals.
“I like the way we responded,” Staal said. “We’ve built a lot of confidence off the way we’ve played since that [3-7-2] start. We believe we can win every game.”
The Rangers were sharp from the outset in establishing an up-tempo pace against a speed team. Other than a handful nervous shifts in the third period, the Blueshirts dominated zone time against a young, developing New Jersey team that still carries a substantial burden of proof coming off five consecutive playoff misses.
Coach Alain Vigneault shuffled a couple of his lines following a pair of games on the road in which the Rick Nash-Kevin Hayes-Jimmy Vesey unit was unusually weak in all three zones. Up came Jesper Fast from the fourth line to switch places with Vesey.
And both the remade units — Vesey with Boo Nieves and a thoroughly engaged and effective Paul Carey — shined. Vesey scored the game’s first goal. Fast, the Players’ Player each of the past two seasons for a reason, scored his third goal in three games and sixth in eight. And Hayes notched the final tally.
But equally as important, the Nash-Hayes-Fast unit dominated the Devils’ Taylor Hall-Nico Hischier-Jesper Bratt top line, scoring a 9-1 advantage in shots on net while on the match.
“They’re a young group with a lot of speed and a lot of skill,” Nash said after his revival that followed two of his least impressive performances of his six-year run on Broadway. “We tried to keep them in front of us. And if you could play in their zone like we did a lot of the night, that’s frustrating for offensive guys.”
Mats Zuccarello, whose game has been lagging, stepped up to score two in addition to scooping a puck rolling toward the net out of harm’s way after Henrik Lundqvist had gotten a huge piece of a Brian Gibbons’ left wing drive at 6:15 of the second period of what was then a 1-0 game. But even as individuals stepped up, the Rangers were more than the sum of their parts. The Blueshirts played with a bit of swagger that has not been evident most of the year. They played with a jump in their step even if they need to take bigger steps to secure a playoff berth under a format in which it is possible that the Metro’s sixth place team will be left out in the cold even while finishing with a better record than the Atlantic’s third-place qualifier.
“That could happen,” Staal said. “That’s not good.”