SAINT PAUL, Minn. — The Rangers spent the first half of Wednesday in Raleigh, N.C., meeting, practicing, and essentially tending to their self-inflicted wounds from Tuesday night’s 3-1 rollover defeat to the Hurricanes.
And they confronted this stark reversal in form before arriving here in advance of Thursday night’s match against the Wild with a leadership group operating without a captain. That was a result of the club’s practical decision not to name a late-season successor to Ryan Callahan after he was traded on March 5 to the Lightning in exchange for Martin St. Louis.
“There hasn’t been much of a change at all in the dynamic,” Brad Richards, an alternate captain since joining the Rangers at the start of the 2011-12 season, told The Post on Tuesday.
“Off-ice, there are some [housekeeping] issues that we have to make sure are being taken care of, but as far as the team goes, we have enough guys here who are comfortable with taking a leadership role and understand what that means,” said No. 19.
Callahan was for the most part a lead-by-example captain rather than a master orator, so it’s not as if the Blueshirts must confront a void in their time of need.
“Things that have to be said will still get said,” Richards said. “I’m not taking anything away from Cally, but he was pretty young and not that vocal.
“It’s not like he was 38 and had been in the league for 18 years, so everybody was looking to him to listen to what he had to say,” Richards said of the 28-year-old Callahan, a seven-year veteran who was in his third season as captain. “We have other guys here who know what to say and when to say it.
“I don’t want to make it sound like we don’t miss him. What he did on the ice, you can’t replace. It’s just that nothing is really going to change in the way we approach things in the room.”
Richards, Marc Staal and Dan Girardi operate as the three alternates, Girardi having been named in the wake of Callahan’s departure. Girardi, who joined the team at the 2006-07 All-Star break, is second in club seniority to Henrik Lundqvist, who has been a Ranger since the start of 2005-06. Staal is third, a Blueshirt since the start of 2007-08.
“It feels different without [Callahan] here,” Staal said. “There were stretches when he wasn’t here because of injury, but that’s not the same, you knew he’d be back.
“Me having played with him for so long, it’s definitely going to take some getting used to. But to have a guy like Marty, who is such a leader himself and is so respected, come here, that’s going to be a help to a lot of guys.”
The Blueshirts signed 21-year-old winger Ryan Haggerty as a free agent out of RPI. The 6-foot, 200-pound Haggerty, who scored 28 goals in 35 games this year, will join the Rangers when they return from the road, and will thus burn the first year of his three-year entry-level contract.
A Stamford, Conn., native, Haggerty was a teammate of Rangers/Wolf Pack winger J.T. Miller and Rangers draft pick Brady Skjei on the 2010-11 U.S. National Development Team.
Though Haggerty — who is reputed to have a dynamic shot — is eligible to play for the Rangers for the remainder of the regular season, he would not be eligible to play in the playoffs as he was not on the Blueshirts’ reserve list as of the trade deadline.
Cam Talbot, who defeated the Blackhawks 2-1 on Feb. 27 in his last start, will be in nets against the Wild. Lundqvist would be the scheduled starter the following night against the Jets in Winnipeg.
Vigneault broke up two of his top three units in the third period in Carolina, leaving the Derick Brassard-Benoit Pouliot-Mats Zuccarello line intact, but Thursday’s opening combinations are unknown. Richards and Zuccarello did not skate Wednesday, each getting a “maintenance day.”
Raphael Diaz, yet to play in a game since his deadline acquisition from Vancouver, skated with John Moore at practice when Kevin Klein was paired with Justin Falk, who has not played in a game since Dec. 29.