With their home blue jerseys 0-for-3 for the week and threatening to send the Rangers home for a long summer, on Friday they asked yesterday’s Garden visitors to switch.
The slumping Flyers not only consented to wear their home orange but, as it turned out, basically agreed not to show up at all.
True, with or without superstition, the Rangers were super in a 7-0 rout. But pragmatically, their Garden luck turned not because they liked the white of their sweaters, but because Ryan Callahan was able to fire in view of the whites of goalie Brian Boucher’s eyes.
Fifty-one seconds in, Callahan converted a slam dunk from Brandon Dubinsky, who had beaten Braydon Coburn behind the net. Eleven minutes later, with Mike Richards in the penalty box, Callahan caught the goalie leaning his upper body off the post and nailed the top corner.
In the second period, Kris Versteeg left a puck in the slot and, thank you very much, Callahan rifled it over Boucher’s glove before planting his foot to redirect Matt Gilroy’s third-period feed.
Total distance of all four goals: About 25 feet. Total distance to the playoffs: Fourteen games, not long either in the total scheme of things, although we’ll have a better idea of that by the next Rangers home game a week from tomorrow. By then, ninth-place Buffalo, trailing the Blueshirts by two points, and eighth-place Carolina will have made up all but one of their games in hand.
In the meantime the Rangers, 20-13-1 on the road this season, will be playing in Anaheim and San Jose in their favorite unis. They were Callahan’s too, long before he became the third NHL player this season (Marian Gaborik and Johan Franzen) to score at least four goals in a game.
“I absolutely think the home team should wear white,” Callahan said, and not tongue-in-cheek. “I don’t know why they ever switched.”
Despite the fact home teams wore white from 1970 through 2004, the change was made coming out of the lockout in the spirit of Original Six tradition. Callahan, however, looks equally good, home and road, no matter what he’s wearing, even in games he is not scoring four goals.
“He brings so much to the table all the time,” said Henrik Lundqvist. “He’s always a positive guy and he brings guys up.
“He means a lot the way he carries himself. He’ll be very important to this team for a long time.”
The Rangers were without Callahan, who had a broken hand, for 21 games this season, which coach John Tortorella feared would seem like a very long time. Lundqvist is the only key Ranger who hasn’t been out and the coach thought Callahan, the future Rangers captain, would be missed the most.
“I was really concerned when he went down,” said the coach. “He’s emerging as one of our top leaders as far as just the small things you do in the game, the wall play, the penalty killing, blocking shots.
“He doesn’t bring the flash, it’s the intangibles. But that’s what we are as a team.”
On the strength of his first NHL hat trick, Callahan is tied with Brian Boyle for the team goal lead with 20, reflective of Marian Gaborik’s struggles and Callahan’s absence of course, but also of the Rangers’ balance.
Nevertheless, the name of the team MVP of this season couldn’t just be picked out any of the hats that came down on the ice yesterday in a hot goal scorer’s honor. To the Rangers’ all-for-one-and-one-for all, Callahan supplies the night-in, night-out.