NHL

Rangers battle back, top Coyotes in OT

On night when the Rangers were sick, when they were distracted, when it looked as if they were stepping right into an easy trap — they somehow reversed the tide and found a way.

After going down 2-0 and 3-2 to the Coyotes at the Garden on Monday night, the Rangers clawed their way to a 4-3 overtime win, one that was as much will and determination as anything else. It gave them their fourth win in a row and enabled them to leapfrog the Flyers for second place in the Metropolitan Division, setting up a big game — although not quite as desperate as it would have been had they lost — on Wednesday night, when Philadelphia rides into the Garden.

“We found a way,” said coach Alain Vigneault, whose team got the game-tying goal from defenseman Dan Girardi with 3:28 remaining in regulation, and then got the game-winner from another blue-liner, Ryan McDonagh, who stuffed in a rebound with 1:56 gone by in the extra frame.

“We were probably a little bit not as high as we usually are emotionally, and physically, on the ice, it took us a while to get going,” Vigneault said. “It says a lot about the group.”

The day started with news of both Derek Stepan and Martin St. Louis fighting the flu bug that is going around the locker room, and yet both of the forwards played — if that is the word used for their scant ice times. Stepan got 7:04 with no shifts after the 12:23 mark of the third period, and St. Louis got 11:04, stepping off at 9:12 remaining in the third and not returning.

“I made a mistake tonight, I shouldn’t have played Step and Marty,” Vigneault said. “I should have taken it out of their hands. I saw it. I saw them at 4 [p.m.]. They didn’t look good. They both said they wanted to play, but at the end of the day, I’ve got to be better. I’ve got to take that out of their hands because they had no energy and obviously it showed.”

The team as a whole had no energy to start the game, and it had to be partially because of the 15-minute pregame ceremony honoring goalie Henrik Lundqvist, who passed Mike Richter for the most wins in franchise history and passed Eddie Giacomin for the most shutouts all while on last week’s sweep of a three-game road trip.

“It was a very special moment in my career,” said Lundqvist, who is now tied with the Islanders’ Billy Smith for 24th on the all-time wins list with 305. “The first period, it was a tough test for us in this game. But we showed so much character.”

The Rangers (40-29-4) went down 2-0 in the first 8:22 behind goals from Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Jeff Halpern, but just 6:10 into the second got a much-needed tip-in goal from Brad Richards, breaking his personal 10-game goal-less streak.

“Down 2-0, we knew Step and Marty were dying on the bench,” said Richards, who played his best game in weeks while registering a plus-3 in 21:34, his most ice time since Dec. 18. “I think with that, you get more responsibility, more ice, and you have to do what you can with it.”

Derick Brassard tied things up midway through the second, but six minutes later Kyle Chipchura gave Phoenix (34-26-12) the 3-2 lead heading into the third. With the play tightening and under four minutes left, Girardi tipped one in for another clutch goal — “The legend grows!” Richards proclaimed afterward — getting them to the extra frame, where McDonagh sealed it.

“The first part of the year it seemed to go the other way and we seemed to lose a handle on games when we went down early,” Richards said. “We had to gain momentum, battle at it, and keep believing in what we were doing.”

Believing, it seems, is getting a whole lot easier.