BOSTON — They’re coming home as the Black and Blueshirts, winners of two straight on the road following last night’s 3-2 victory over the formidable Bruins in another gritty effort in which teammates had one another’s back in all the dirty areas of the ice from start to finish.
Here’s the difference this year: When Sean Avery returned to the bench at 2:57 of the second after serving 17 minutes for stepping up and instigating an early first-period fight with Mark Stuart after the Boston defenseman caught Ruslan Fedotenko up around the head crossing the blue line, coach John Tortorella twice slapped No. 16 on the back in approval.
“I have no problem with what Sean did at all. That’s good, you kill those off, but our stick fouls and lack of discipline in that area were ridiculous and stupid,” Tortorella said after the Rangers were shorthanded six times overall for 9:19, include a pair of separate 5-on-3’s against amounting to 2:02. “We have a lot of good things going on in our room, but we have to maintain our discipline.”
There was a feel of old-time hockey permeating the rink in a match that featured three first-period bouts. The Rangers may not have been as sharp as they would have liked in this game but their battle-level never wavered.
“We talked at the start of the season about having an identity of a hard-working team that finished its checks and had each other’s backs, but we’d only been doing it in spurts,” Ryan Callahan said. “So we had a few meetings before [Thursday’s] Toronto game to reinforce those things.
“You see what Sean did there, and that’s the identity we want to have. We don’t mind those penalties at all, we’ll kill those all day.”
The Rangers — who lost Brandon Prust after he took a high stick around the right eye in the second — killed five, only allowing Zdeno Chara’s 5-on-3 in the final seconds of the first after taking a 2-0 lead when Artem Anisimov batted one out of midair on a power play backhand at 11:34 before Alex Frolov scored at 12:01.
Actually, Marc Staal’s slash late in the first that gave the Bruins the 5-on-3 on which Chara converted, led to the winner, for when the defenseman came out of the box following the back-end kill, he scooped up a free puck in the neutral zone and sped in on a 2-on-0 before scoring on a nifty backhand at 0:48.
“A clear-cut breakaway from the blue line, definitely my first,” Staal said. “I screw around [in practice] on that, but I don’t usually score.”
Dan Girardi, who played 10:19 in the second including one shift of 3:11, and finished at 24:17, was outstanding. Other than one hiccup on a holding penalty, so too was Michal Rozsival.
Then, too, Henrik Lundqvist turned in a royal performance in gaining his first victory since the opener in Buffalo two weeks ago.
“You try to figure out what you can do better,” said Lundqvist, who preserved the 3-2 lead with a magnificent back-door save on Jordan Caron with 6:40 to play and then stoned Nathan Horton 40 second later. “I thought my game has been pretty good, but not good enough, obviously.”
Last night, The King was good enough. Last night, the Rangers were tough enough. Black and Blueshirts at the Garden tonight against the Devils.