It was a game Roger Neilson would have loved. Of course John Tortorella didn’t mind it much himself.
For this Rangers coach who left his Safe is Death philosophy behind somewhere in a television studio when he was between jobs in Tampa Bay and New York, was beaming following last night’s 1-0 Garden victory over the 27th-overall Panthers that could have been lifted from the Captain Video’s playbook.
“I thought it was very important to win a game like that at this time of year,” Tortorella said after his club’s fifth straight victory and seventh in the past eight games moved the seventh-place Rangers within three points of sixth-place Montreal while maintaining a six-point edge over ninth-place Carolina.
“I’m happy with our patience and the way we stuck with it. After an emotional win [in Pittsburgh on Sunday], it was [a question of] whether we were going to be ready, and we were.
“These guys get it.”
The Rangers never yielded to frustration as the game droned on in a scoreless tie through 20 minutes, through 40 minutes, through 45 minutes of trapping, shallow forechecking and chipping the puck in and out in a match that belonged as much on a chessboard as on a rink.
“We had a lot of chances in the second period that we couldn’t bury and sometimes that can wear on you, but not on us and not tonight,” said Brandon Dubinsky, who went to the net to redirect Ryan Callahan’s nifty feed from the right wing for the game’s only goal at 7:49 of the third period. “They [the Panthers] may be out of it, but they’re an NHL team and we knew it was going to be a grind.
“It was a good test. It was a playoff-type game for us, and it was a game we need to be able to win if we’re going to be the playoff team we want to be.”
Let’s pause for a moment. For while the victory in a tight game that represented Henrik Lundqvist’s league-leading 10th shutout does reflect well on the unit and the defense corps that operated without leading man Marc Staal for the second straight game, the pace of the match against the Panthers was reflective of October, not mid-April, let alone May or June.
As long as the Rangers, who have outscored their opponents 20-10 over the winning streak and 33-16 in their past eight games, recognize that, there’s no harm in framing the victory any way they’d like.
“I think it says a lot for us that we stuck with it and never lost our patience,” said Dan Girardi, who led the club with 24:04 of ice while paired with Steve Eminger, just fine in 21:07 filling in for Staal. “We’ve been very good this year at sticking with our game.”
The Dubinsky-Artem Anisimov-Callahan unit had a number of strong shifts down low. Brian Boyle, who has found his second wind, came up with his third straight imposing game skating with Brandon Prust and Ruslan Fedotenko. The Wojtek Wolski-Derek Stepan-Mats Zuccarello unit avoided trouble.
And though the Vinny Prospal-Erik Christensen-Marian Gaborik line improved from Sunday and created some chances, Tortorella kept the unit on the bench for the final 6:39 of the match, preferring to go with more defensively reliable forwards.
Just, in fact, as Roger Neilson would have done.