MONTREAL — Cam Talbot and the Rangers came into this Habitant House of Horrors and ate it up as if it were made out of gingerbread.
“This whole thing here with the New York shadow over this place, I didn’t really get it,” Brad Richards said after the Blueshirts’ 1-0 Saturday Night Special of a victory over the Canadiens. “And I don’t think our new coach did, either.
“Before the game he made a joke about how there were no ghosts here, that it’s a great place to play and we should go out and have some fun.”
Which is just what Alain Vigneault’s team did in playing impressive, impassioned and disciplined hockey from wire to wire in front of their first-year goaltender to break a seven-game regulation losing streak here, in which the Rangers had been outscored 25-3, and an eight-game drought overall stretching back to March 17, 2009.
“My first NHL shutout would have meant the world to me in any building,” said Talbot, the first Rangers goaltender of the NHL’s modern era that began in 1944-45 to start his career with five straight games allowing two goals or fewer. “It’s just a great feeling.”
Talbot, who has allowed a sum of eight goals in going 4-1, was resolute. He stood his ground, held his position and battled through traffic to stop all 22 shots he faced in recording the first Rangers shutout here since Ed Giacomin blanked the Habs 5-0 on Feb. 25, 1967, in the final season of the Original Six Era.
“I was 6,” Vigneault said.
If this were historic, no one could tell it by the unflappable 26-year-old goalie, who barely emoted when it ended, allowing himself only the briefest and most modest of displays — if you blinked, you missed it — before he was greeted by his teammates.
If there were one regret, it was that Talbot didn’t get the game puck, a Canadien apparently flipping it into the stands immediately after the final buzzer.
“One of our guys tried to grab it, but it was too late,” the goaltender said. “So I got one from the penalty box instead.”
If the Rangers were late arriving for the trophy, it was about the only time all night they were late on the puck. They were dogged in their puck pursuit, buttoned down in their scheme and flashed speed and determination throughout the match in winning for the seventh time in their past nine games.
“Of course we talked about not having won here. We’re reminded of it every time we come here,” said Ryan Callahan, whose power-play deflection of Richards’ left wing wrist shot at 5:25 of the second, moments after a two-man advantage expired, stood all night. “I thought we played a very strong game, and got the game we needed from our goaltender to be able to win it.”
The Ryan McDonagh-Dan Girardi defense pair had its best game of the season, with a notably strong effort behind them by the Marc Staal-Anton Stralman tandem. Dom Moore, returning after missing the previous seven matches with a strained oblique, was outstanding in his fourth-line role and thus gave Vigneault more personnel options as the night evolved.
“I thought we put a lot of pressure on them when they were trying to move the puck up the ice,” Moore said. “When you can put that kind of pressure on a team, it can feel like there are more than five men doing the forechecking.”
The Blueshirts found the perfect blend of aggressiveness and a defensive posture. They were careful with the puck in the neutral zone, able to avoid turnovers that would have sent the Canadiens off to the races in transition. The Rangers’ puck support and defensive zone coverage were sublime.
Indeed, the Canadiens had only one shot through the first 10:24 of the third period. Montreal’s best chance of the period came on a long-range Alexei Emelin slap shot through traffic with 4:35 remaining.
“The guys did a great job of keeping them to the outside,” Talbot said. “If a shot got through and I left a rebound, they cleared it.”
And so the Ghostbuster got his shutout and the Rangers ate up the House of Horrors as if made out of gingerbread.
Ho-hum.