Rangers roll into All-Star break on 5-game winning streak
NEW YORK >> With a 4-1 win over the Vegas Golden Knights on Friday night at Madison Square Garden, the New York Rangers kept their momentum going.
Well, sort of. Their fifth straight win will be their last for a little while, as a once-again red-hot team gets cooled off by the All-Star break, which will have them idle until they return home to face the Calgary Flames on February 6.
Bad timing for a layoff after stringing together ten points to firmly cement them into third place in the Metropolitan Division?
“I don’t think so,” captain and defenseman Jacob Trouba said after the game.
“I think we can use the break; recover, rest up a little bit. We can come back and keep building this thing. We like where we’re at, where we’re trending as a team, and we continue to get better. And I think we will. Everybody’s going through this break, so we’ll handle ourselves accordingly throughout the break, and come back ready to go.”
Forward Barclay Goodrow echoed similar sentiments.
“I think we’re happy with where our game is at now,” he said. “For the last two months or so, we’ve played well. There’s still another gear we can take it to, but I think we’re pretty happy with where we’re at.”
Although much of the headlines after the game were rightly focused on the Rangers organization’s poor execution of Pride Night — the team was announced to be wearing special Pride-themed jerseys in warmups and give players the option to use rainbow tape on their stick blades, only to walk that back unannounced, a widely-criticized move that comes in the shadow of Flyers defenseman Ivan Provorov’s recent decision to not take warmups at all in Philly’s version of the sweater — at least on the ice, there was plenty of reason to be happy.
After struggling early on in his tenure with the team, 37-year-old backup goaltender Jaroslav Halak was dazzling at times in the win against a strong Golden Knights team, stopping 33 of 34 shots in a performance that didn’t look any different than what starter Igor Shesterkin, who sat in advance of being scheduled to get some work in the All-Star Game itself.
“He was unbelievable,” Goodrow said of Halak.
“He made, I think we gave up five two-on-one’s in the first period, but he was huge and kept us in the game. It’s a good feeling when your second goalie can come in and play like that and provide a sense of calmness throughout the team.”
The veteran Halak said himself that he was anything but calm in some of his first few starts with the Blueshirts, admitting that perhaps he was trying a bit too hard with his new team, one he signed a one-year, $1.55 million deal with this past offseason, marking his seventh different NHL club over a long career.
It’s turned into a good fit, however, and while momentum might not quite carry over for the team from his first win at home this season, it will at least give the veteran backup some confidence — as well as some confidence in him from his teammates — that he can handle some critical starts as the playoff push picks up in the second half shortly.
“Don’t worry about those (early) games, turn the page, and just keep moving forward,” Halak said. “That’s what I want to do. Get that first game, first win, and then keep it rolling.”