BUFFALO — Not for nothing, but the Rangers will take nothing-nothing down to the wire every time.
“It seemed like a grind the whole way, a game of hitting, blocking shots, coming down to the last shot,” Dan Girardi, a rock on the blue line, said after another throwback Norris-type game. “That’s our style of hockey.
“We’ll take that any day.”
The Rangers took last night’s match, 1-0, over the Sabres when U.S. Olympian Ryan Callahan beat U.S. Olympian Ryan Miller for just his second career shootout goal in 10 tries after 65 minutes of scoreless hockey dominated for the most part by the grinders, the penalty-killers and by goaltenders Miller and Henrik Lundqvist.
The King was spectacular in the final minutes of regulation and in the early moments of overtime when the Sabres went on the power play twice in the final 5:11 of the third. He buckled once in the shootout, beaten by Jason Pominville when the Sabres were down to their final strike after Marian Gaborik had scored leading off for the Rangers, but that was it — that was the only puck that got by Lundqvist in his post All-Star return.
“I wanted to come back and get back into it right away,” said The King, who stoned Brad Boyes twice from in front in the final minutes of the third before spectacularly denying Derek Roy on a right porch rebound in overtime. “The first 10 minutes I was a little rusty, mentally I was a little off, but then I was able to get to where I needed to be.
“The way we were playing defense, I just had to do my job, be focused and make good decisions.”
The Eastern-leading Rangers have scored 17 goals while allowing 16 — shootouts excluded — in going 5-3-1 over their last nine matches. The shutout was Lundqvist’s sixth of the season and fourth in his last 18 starts, a stretch during which he has allowed no more than one goal, 10 times.
It wasn’t Lundqvist, alone, however. It never is.
The penalty-killers, paced by a rambunctious and relentless Callahan, Brian Boyle, Brandon Prust and Derek Stepan, simply would not yield in snuffing five Buffalo power plays that included a 41-second five-on-three in the first period.
At even strength, the Rangers hounded the puck and gave little ground through swatches of a game in which they simply could not create, could not generate speed through the neutral zone, could not string together a pair of completed passes.
“It wasn’t the prettiest game by any means, but playing back-to-back after five days off, that was almost to be expected,” said Callahan, who took a Cody McCormick high stick in the right eyelid late in the second period that went unnoticed by referee Justin St. Pierre, who worked the final 59:23 on his own after partner Kelly Sutherland departed after taking a puck in the face.
“We were rusty but our work ethic was there. We can be proud of that.”
Coach John Tortorella flipped Artem Anisimov and Brandon Dubinsky starting late in the first, moving Anisimov onto the unit with Callahan and Brad Richards while shifting Dubinsky to the fourth line with John Mitchell and Mike Rupp after No. 42 displayed signs of revival.
But again, it was a night on which the Rangers displayed their mental toughness as well as their physical toughness. Girardi, Ryan McDonagh, Michael Del Zotto and Marc Staal were strong in the trenches, barely wavering.
When they did, The King rode to the rescue.