Henrik Lundqvist pitched a 35-save shutout in the nets in last night’s Game 7. (Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Everything was hanging over the heads of the Rangers — their expectations, their history, their penchant for pulling on heartstrings and playing the tightest of games in the most dire situations. It was all poised to drop and smash their season as if it never began.
But the team that came out last night at the Verizon Center was having none of that, no sir, not with their goalie, not with their grind, not with their new-found persona of team unflappable. With Henrik Lundqvist notching his second straight shutout, the Rangers beat the Capitals 5-0 in Game 7 of this first-round series, a win that exorcised the franchise demon of never having won a Game 7 on the road and one that advanced the Blueshirts to a second-round matchup against the Bruins starting Thursday night in Boston.
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“It feels great,” said Lundqvist, who finished with 35 saves, 62 over the two geams when the fifth-highest scoring team in the league during the regular season could put nothing by him at all. “Just a fun way to turn around and back it up. It’s a lot of hard work here but it paid off.”
Somehow, the team in front of Lundqvist played as if they were filled with confidence pulled from some hidden well deep within their psyches, someplace that was filled long before this season of middling results and tepid enthusiasm.
“We’ve believed in our club all year,” said Michael Del Zotto, the defenseman who added a big goal to make it 3-0 with 5:34 gone by in the second period, just 2:10 after Taylor Pyatt batted one home to get a desperate 2-0 lead. “It wasn’t the smoothest year for us, but we’ve had a lot of fun working hard for each other and we’ve never given up. With the lockout, we knew from day one it was going to be a different year.”
What hasn’t changed is Lundqvist, the reigning Vezina Trophy winner from his team’s run to the Eastern Conference finals last season and finalist for the award again this year. He set the tone midway through the first period when he stoned Mike Green on a breakaway, the Rangers’ rush the other way resulting in Arron Asham lifting a slap shot over Braden Holtby’s glove for a 1-0 lead.
“In a game like this, you’re looking for a great start,” Lundqvist said, “and we go it.”
The third-period piling-on came with goals from Ryan Callahan and Mats Zuccarello, the Rangers soon out of the nation’s capital and on to the Bruins, the physical team that battered their way back last night from a 4-1 deficit to the Maple Leafs to win a Game 7 of their own in overtime, 5-4.
But to find heart and toughness, the Rangers need to look no further than their own defenseman Ryan McDonagh, who held superstar Alex Ovechkin pointless over the final five games of this series, a career-worst for the two-time MVP. With 8:30 gone by in the first, Ovechkin broke up a timid start by plowing McDonagh into the boards face-first. With no penalty called, no whistle blown, and no help to the bench, McDonagh retreated to the locker room and missed two shifts at most, the sacrifice needed to win playoff games written in scars and welts all over his face afterwards, shrouded in the shadow of the Broadway Hat.
“Ovechkin is trying to get his team going, and I think it’s a penalty,” said coach John Tortorella. “That’s how it’s going to be. [Bruins’ forward Milan] Lucic is going to be coming after him in Boston, and that’s the way you have to play.”
So the Rangers weathered this storm, barely, and they know the next one isn’t going to be any easier.
“We managed to win this series without playing our absolute best,” Lundqvist said. “I think we all know playing Boston, we have to step up our game.”
bcyrgalis@nypost.com