Rangers get ‘must win’ going into holiday break
No Ranger in his right mind was going to waste energy or words critiquing this 32 overtime victory over the Ducks at the Garden that, yes indeed, sent the Blueshirts into the NHL’s holiday recess in their right minds instead of out of them.
“It was a must win for us for so many reasons,” Henrik Lundqvist said after Mats Zuccarello’s powerplay goal at 2:37 ended the Rangers’ threegame regulation losing streak and gave the team just its second victory in the last eight game (251) and fourth in the last 15 (492). “Going into this break, you try to feel a little bit good about yourself.
“It was important for us to win this game so we could take a deep breath going into the break,” said The King, who did surrender the tying goal on Rickard Rakell’s leftcircle drive with 2:54 remaining in the third period. “It was a tight game and very hard to create chances, but in the end, all that matters is the win.”
It was a Mental Health win for the Rangers, who, despite this slide the last four weeks, enter the recess in second place in the Metropolitan Division, a point ahead of the Islanders (who have one game in hand) but more importantly, five points clear of a playoff spot.
“Obviously this last stretch hasn’t been nearly good enough and we’re certainly going to have to do a better job when we come back, but finding the way to win this game puts us in a much better frame of mind,” Derek Stepan said. “It certainly makes Christmas a whole lot better.”
Derick Brassard scored twice by capitalizing on egregious Ducks defensive turnovers, the first of which he forced himself for an unassisted goal at 17:50 of the first that erased a 10 Anaheim lead before Zuccarello created the turnover and set up his centerman for the 21 lead goal at 2:44 of the third period.
“The break is going to be nice for sure,” said Brassard, who was credited with an assist on Zuccarello’s powerplay winner, the manadvantage gained when Cam Fowler held Ryan McDonagh as the captain drove to the net after taking a headman pass. “We competed hard, we played the right way, and we won.”
The Ducks, the NHL’s other 2015 losing semifinalists, are the NHL’s most disappointing team, having won just 12of33 games (12156). They are last in the West, but somehow only four points out of a playoff berth, albeit with seven teams to jump in order to get there.
“You could see there were two struggling teams out there that didn’t want to give up anything,” Stepan said. “We had to work hard for our chances, we had to work hard in our puck battles, and we did. “We kept at it.”
The clubs combined for just 23 shots through the first two periods, 10 by the Rangers. But the Blueshirts, leaking like a balloon pricked by a thousand pins, were just fine with the, um, flow of the game, given that they had surrendered 17 goals over their previous three games and a sum of 31 over their previous six.
“We really didn’t give them much,” said Marc Staal, who played his most formidable game in weeks. “I thought our compete [level] and our oneonone battles were much better. It was a big reason we won the game.”
The penaltykill unit allowed only two shots in four full power plays against. Other than a stretch in the second period when things turned hairy in front of Lundqvist — perhaps ignited by a shift on which the netminder wandered to ineffectually attempt to poke a puck away in the rightwing circle with 8:30 to go — the Rangers kept order in the defensive zone.
“We played hard today; everyone was working hard, stepping up for the team and playing for each other,” said Zuccarello, who pounded home the winner from the right circle off a crossice feed from Dan Boyle. “It was a really great win for us.
“When we lose, no one is more upset than we are. We have to stick together. We are family here.”