It’s the Bruins, Canadiens and Flyers that the Rangers are chasing, not Philadelphia wing Daniel Carcillo.
“We are in such a spot here we have to concentrate on playing our game,” said Rangers coach John Tortorella. “It’s too important a game to do something stupid and cost your team doing some payback.”
It’s taken a lot of discipline by the fans to still believe in their punchless team, much more discipline than Olli Jokinen showed in two-handing Arron Asham before yesterday’s game was eight minutes old. Daniel Briere soon thereafter cashed in past a screened Henrik Lundqvist. And the way the Rangers are forced to operate, this already seemed to be one more dumb mistake than they could survive.
But that was before the Flyers started to play dumber. Their sense of urgency, perhaps blunted by a 7-point cushion and rousing comeback win Saturday against Chicago, they allowed Sean Avery to tie the game after an extended camp-out. Lukas Krajicek then cross-checked Brandon Dubinsky, enabling Michal Roszival to break the tie through a Chris Drury screen.
Scott Hartnell got suckered by Avery into throwing a punch and went to the box alone, doing nothing for Philadelphia’s startlingly-weak comeback effort. After Avery blew the clincher off Michael Leighton’s glove, the buzzing Rangers and their buzzword coach had the “structured” 3-1 victory of Tortorella’s dreams.
Indeed, the biggest win of the year until the next one was far less stressful to Lundqvist than the vast majority of the tightropes he walks across a deep gorge trying to carry his team to eighth place.
“I think the key for us is not to look too far ahead,” said Lundqvist, another way to say he dare not look down.
Practiced as he is at having about as much margin for error as Carcillo showed class in whaling on Marian Gaborik last trip to Philly, the goalie had dare not become accustomed to his team supporting him like it did yesterday.
“It is a lot easier to be up 2-1 than down 2-1 when the next goal might be too much to overcome,” said Lundqvist. “But we didn’t give up much at all, were in control all the time.”
That meant not just of their emotions, but of two zones, preventing one of the deepest sets for forwards in the NHL from establishing any kind of cycle.
This was about as well as the Rangers can play, and now tomorrow night against a Montreal team that is five points ahead of them and next Sunday against a Boston team that is one point ahead of them, they practically have to do it again, allowing no time to breathe Thursday night against a St. Louis team that remains in contention in the West.
There is still time for the suddenly-hot Canadiens to cool off, for Boston to begin to miss the blind-sided Marc Savard, and three games in the next seven days for the Rangers to stay close enough to build more belief — one shift at a time.
The schedule, which has a six-game trip beginning next week, is not good, much like the team. The Rangers don’t dare think about that, only their next game.