Ruff contribution helped turn around rough start

CHICAGO — When the Rangers’ season started disastrously askew, there were a couple of proverbial sideways glances in the direction of first-year assistant coach Lindy Ruff. The longtime Stars and Sabres head coach had been hired to take over the Rangers’ defense and penalty killing, and both were major contributors to the team’s historically bad 1-5-2 getaway.

But after the Rangers started the season having given up at least one goal on the penalty kill in six of the first eight games, going 22-for-30 (73.3 percent) during that time, things finally started to settle down. That was mostly the case Wednesday as the man-down group gave up one goal in five opportunities during a 6-3 loss to the Blackhawks, taking the penalty-kill to 22-for-24 since the first period in Montreal on Oct. 28.

“Lindy brought in some good ideas,” coach Alain Vigneault said. “Probably took us a little bit of time here as a group to get accus- tomed to some of the trigger points that we want to establish as a team. But our penalty killing has been good here for quite some time.”

The one power-play goal the Rangers did allow against the Blackhawks came when they were in the midst of collectively losing all their defensive structure. In a span of 6:08 that bridged the second and third periods, Chicago scored four times, the final one when former Ranger Artem Anisimov was afforded three hacks from in front for a power-play goal at 5:14 of the third and a 4-1 lead.

Backup goalie Ondrej Pavelec came into the game to replace starter Henrik Lundqvist 6:32 into the third period. Lundqvist was pulled after allowing four goals on 34 shots, and Pavelec got into his fifth game of the season.

Pavelec had just three starts in the first 19 games, the most recent on Oct. 28 in Montreal.

“Pavs has got to keep himself sharp,” Vigneault said before the game. “It’s not easy, but he’s got to do some extra and when he gets the call, he’s got to be good for us.

The lineup remained the same, with defenseman Brendan Smith a healthy scratch for the sixth straight game and the eighth time in the first 19 and forward Paul Carey a scratch for the second straight game and the 11th time in the past 14.