6-SHOOTERS
Nash scores twice, Rangers still rolling
Whether patience or confidence came first, they now both exist in abundance.
Because the Rangers are rolling, overcoming a bit of a sloppy performance in a 4-2 victory over the Oilers on Saturday afternoon at the Garden. With no panic in their game and another big performance from the power play, the small things are adding up to big things and the Blueshirts have won six straight.
“It’s something that when we were losing, you try to force things to make it better and you only make it worse,” alternate captain Marc Staal told The Post, that 1-5-2 start to the season finally a distant memory. “When you’re winning games — and the game was close — so maybe we were not at our best, but we knew to stick with it and wait for an opportunity to cash one in, and that’s what we did.”
The Rangers (9-7-2) were able to get two goals from Rick Nash, one on the man-advantage that scored twice and is now 9-for-23 (39 percent) over the past seven games. That’s one way to neutralize the Oilers (6-9-1) and wunderkind Connor McDavid, who was limited in his time and space by fiveman units all game.
Yet McDavid did manage a powerplay goal at 10:06 of the second period that put Edmonton up, 2-1, a position that might have flustered the Rangers earlier in the season. They had been turning the puck over with too much frequency, exactly the type of mistakes that buried them early in the season. The Oilers were pushing and the Rangers could have crumbled. Instead, they didn’t flinch.
“I think even the lapses that we’ve had in games, even in the second period there [when] we didn’t have a great first 10 minutes, but we fought and got it back in our favor,” said Kevin Shattenkirk, who collected another splendid primary assist on Pavel Buchnevich’s power-play goal that tied it, 2-2, at 15:10 of the second. “I think that’s what were are doing better of late. We are starting to minimize these lapses and really kill them before they do any real damage to us.”
Buchnevich’s goal was his seventh in the past eight games, and it was followed 3:43 later when Nash finished off another man-advantage by a deft redirection of an equally skilled pass from Brady Skjei for a definitive 3-2 lead at 18:53 of the second. It also happened to beat old friend Cam Talbot, now winless in three starts against the Rangers since the 2015 offseason trade that sent him from Broadway to Bison Country.
“Brady and I talked about it, and he made a great pass,” said Nash, who has six goals on the season. “When you get a goalie like Cam, we know him pretty well. He challenges hard. He leaves that backdoor play open.”
The Oilers still came out hard to start the third period, but the Rangers and goalie Henrik Lundqvist were able to weather that storm — and then start pushing back. For a long sequence midway through the third, the Blueshirts held the play entirely, with coach Alain Vigneault calling it “our best period.” It carried right into the final minutes, when Michael Grabner buried one into the empty net for his eighth goal of the season (fourth emptynetter) to finish things off.
“I think it’s important that we realize that we are happy with a six-game winning streak, but we’re still not in a great spot,” said Lundqvist, who finished with 27 saves as he begins to look like his old, stable self out there again. “We had to do this to get back in the race. I think now we just need to push ourselves.”