The backup almost needed a backup.
“Artie [Anisimov] hit me right in the sternum in the warmup,” Marty Biron said. “It kind of choked me a little bit.
“I came in and told Hank. He started laughing, kind of stayed half-dressed.”
Henrik Lundqvist felt kind of half dead with a head cold when he showed up last night at the Garden. He was scratched only an hour and 45 minutes before the game.
“I was walking around, and he mentioned he wasn’t feeling that great,” Biron said. “I started to think there was a possibility I could play, if not at the start, then maybe sometime during.”
Biron played three periods and an extra 1:32 before Anisimov gave the Rangers a 3-2 overtime win over Buffalo.
The goalie, who came in from the cold because the starter had a bad cold, played for a second straight start like someone who can be trusted. And trust us, coach John Tortorella has no desire to play Lundqvist 73 games for a second-straight season.
“We’re trying to allow him [Lundqvist] to work on his technique,” the coach said Wednesday. “[Past years] we played Hank so many games he was just trying to get through the practices.”
The last Rangers season ended on a shootout goal by Philadelphia’s Claude Giroux that Lundqvist, after starting 24 virtual playoff games out of the Rangers last 25 regular-season contests, admitted afterward that he might have been too tired to stop.
That had to stop, and Biron, one year and done with the Islanders after six-plus-seasons in Buffalo and two-plus in Philadelphia, jumped at the Rangers’ two-year offer.
Always a good first-stop goalie, he has never earned the big deal with a big-time team because of struggles controlling rebounds. But Biron, one of the better guys in the game, brightens up not just a locker room but Tortorella, who will need a dominant Lundqvist if the Rangers are going to do better than just scramble for eighth place again.
“We don’t get it into overtime without some of [Biron’s] saves,” Tortorella said.
Best among them was on a Thomas Vanek third-period one-timer before Jochen Hecht cut in.
“On his backhand, I thought for sure he would try to pick the short-side post,” Biron said. “I overplayed it, and before I knew it, he’s going to the other side.
“It hit my pad and I didn’t know where it went. I saw on the replay it hit my knob and stayed out. Not the best play by me, but you gotta get breaks. First goal, Danny Girardi put the puck under me and we didn’t get a whistle and should have.”
The Rangers should have lost in overtime because of an Erik Christensen center-ice giveaway but didn’t because Biron played Vanek perfectly on a two-on-one with Derek Roy.
“I have to play him as a shooter because to get the pass across is harder for a right-handed shot,” said Biron. “So when he starts dragging it across, I’m committed.
“If he passes it to Roy I would have to scramble. [Vanek] mishandled it to behind the goal line, then Roy tried to shoot it off me.”
Biron hugged the post even tighter than Tortorella wanted to hug him afterward.
“Good news for not just tonight, but the future,” Tortorella said.
Biron didn’t blow it, which is all you want from a backup.