Surprising Rangers still hanging in playoff mix

NEW YORK >> Madison Square Garden wasn’t supposed to host too many meaningful hockey games this season.

The Rangers were supposed to be a bad, rebuilding team; one that was miserably out of contention for a playoff spot in a competitive Eastern Conference by the time Thanksgiving rolled around.

Yet, with the turkey and stuffing having long since been eaten, here they are, with first-year head coach David Quinn’s team finding themselves with a firm grasp on one of the Metropolitan Division’s playoff spots after winning seven of the eight games they played at MSG over the month of November, concluding with a 4-2 win over the Ottawa Senators on Monday night.

Quinn has emerged as an early candidate for the Jack Adams Award as the league’s best coach for not only the results he’s been able to produce in the win-loss column, but for the way he’s been able to instill a culture of accountability that had perhaps been missing from previous Blueshirts teams.

“I think we’ve got a bunch of good guys and a bunch of good players that want to get better,” Quinn said on Monday.

“From the get-go in training camp, we were all on the same page of what was expected and they’ve all wanted to work hard. That makes it easier. They know when they don’t work hard, you can’t lie to yourself. More times than not, most every time we’ve sat a guy, whether it be during a game or as a healthy scratch, they deep down know it’s the right thing to do and they deserved it. It’s non-negotiable, it can’t be. One of the things we do as a staff is we work hard on our relationships with them, so when we do have that conversation, that’s not the only part of the relationship they know. They know everything we do is to make them the best player they can be, and for us to win hockey games. That’s the only reason we do anything.” You can’t just right the ship in one day, so this was a positive step in the right direction…I think we need to build off what we did (Monday).” There were some huge goals, guys stepping up individually and as a group, and turned the ice around. (The Rangers) have played some good hockey at home, so it was big for us to be able to do that.”