The goal came out of nowhere to win a game that was absolutely nowhere on an artistic scale.
But the Rangers sure weren’t about to throw it back and neither was Rick Nash, who fought for position in front to score at 18:02 of the third period to lift his team to a 3-2 victory over the Stars at the Garden on Friday night in a choppy eyesore of an entertainment vehicle that included 73 faceoffs.
But it did propel the Blueshirts to a 7-2-1 record over their last 10 matches, and it did in a sense validate Wednesday’s 3-2 triumph in Chicago that the team regards as a milepost in the 82-game marathon of a season.
“We talked about it in the morning, how we needed to follow that up with a strong game and we did,” said Henrik Lundqvist, very sharp at the most critical moments just as he was against the Blackhawks. “After that huge game in Chicago, we needed to take care of business here.”
The Nash-Derek Stepan-Chris Kreider top line had had a very quiet night other than a burst in the second period on which Stepan sprung Nash on a breakaway on which goaltender Kari Lehtonen got a piece.
The unit struggled to create a rush or down-low game throughout, with Stepan and Kreider suffering through miserable games at both ends of the ice. But not on the line’s final shift, no sir, not when the line worked on the wall and below the goal line after the Rangers had generated two shots in the previous 10 minutes.
Nash won a battle. Stepan worked low and moved the puck to Kreider, who came out to Lehtonen’s left. The winger’s shot was deflected by Sergei Gonchar before Lehtonen poked the puck into the slot. Nash disengaged himself from Aaron Rome, somehow twisted and got his stick into position on the ice before chipping it up top for his third goal in the last six games.
“I think it was 50-percent luck … well, probably 70-percent luck and 30-percent skill,” No. 61 said. “I was just following the puck and it rolled up. It went a little higher than anticipated but luckily it went in.”
There were seven icings in the first period (five by the Rangers) and six in the second (four by Dallas). The clubs slogged on, neither able to generate rhythm, the Stars attempting to break a regulation losing streak that had reached four the previous night in New Jersey in an even more tedious affair.
Jamie Benn somehow got just 16:46 of ice time and Tyler Seguin, whose deflection off a rush just went wide with 2:20 to play, played only 16:47. The Rangers weren’t about to complain.
“It was a weird game,” Stepan said. “It was a hard game to sustain anything or get any flow. It was very choppy both ways.”
The 23-20-3 Rangers were down 2-1 in the second when they were awarded their first power play of the night at 7:52. Thirty seconds later, the game was tied on a nifty Derick Brassard tip of Mats Zuccaello’s brilliant feed to No. 16’s stick blade.
For years and years, the power play has been an anchor. Now, it has emerged as a singular strength, 5-for-13 in the last four games, 9-for-25 in the last nine and 13-for-42 over the last dozen matches, keyed by the Brassard-Zuccarello-Benoit Pouliot combination up front that has emerged as the top unit with Brad Richards and Ryan McDonagh at the points.
In each of the last two years, the Rangers ranked 23d in the NHL at 15.7-percent. The year before that, the Blueshirts were 18th at 16.9. Now, the Rangers are sixth overall in the NHL at 21.4-percent. The Rangers haven’t had a success rate that high since the 1996-97 team (with Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier and Brian Leetch) clocked in at 22.0.
“We go on with a lot of confidence,” said Richards, who generally stays on for 1:45 in quarterbacking the power play if necessary. “You’ve got to give those three [forwards] a lot of credit for it, the way they’re able to make plays underneath.”
Nash ultimately made the big play underneath to win what had been an unsightly contest. To the Rangers, though, it was beautiful.