RALEIGH, N.C. — Marty St. Louis has provided glimpses of who he is and what he can be through two games with the Rangers, in which he and his teammates have attempted to learn one another on the fly.
Friday night against the Hurricanes, it wasn’t so much what anyone learned about St. Louis, but what the reigning Art Ross Trophy winner reinforced in making the five-on-three pass Derek Stepan converted at 17:46 of the third period in the Blueshirts’ empty-net aided 4-2 victory.
“That’s what he’s here for,” once and current running mate Brad Richards said after the Blueshirts broke their three-game (0-2-1) losing streak. “When you need a play, he makes a play.”
The diagonal feed from the right circle to the left flat came 1:12 into the 1:43 two-man advantage the Rangers gained on consecutive delay of game penalties when defensemen Ron Hainsey and Brett Bellemore sent the puck into the crowd in their own end.
The Rangers — who had owned the play most of the night, but trailed 2-1 at 12:07 of the third when Jeff Skinner beat Henrik Lundqvist on a penalty shot before Ryan McDonagh’s short-handed goal off a nifty Rick Nash feed tied it at 13:24 — were patient on the five-on-three, working the puck, regrouping when things went awry.
“A five-on-three like that near the end, you have to make it count,” said St. Louis, who had five shots in 18:38. “You have to be patient, and take what they give you. You don’t want to rush anything. We didn’t panic.”
There are 18 games to go for the Blueshirts, tied with the Flyers for second in the Metropolitan Division, three points ahead of the fourth-place Blue Jackets, with Philadelphia and Columbus each having 19 games remaining.
That doesn’t leave a lot of time for St. Louis to be patient in getting to know his teammates, and vice-versa, but he is working on it both on and off the ice.
“It’s not just me getting used to them, it’s them getting used to me, too,” he said. “We have to understand each other.”
Or as Richards said: “You hope it’s 100 percent now, but it will get better as we go along.”
The Rangers stayed with it in this one even after they fell behind despite holding a huge advantage in possession and zone time on their way to a 44-24 advantage in shots after outshooting Toronto 37-29 in Wednesday’s 3-2 overtime defeat, Boston 44-33 in Sunday’s 6-3 loss and Philadelphia 35-31 in Saturday’s 4-2 defeat.
“I’ve seen it from a distance. This is a tough team to play against,” St. Louis said when asked his perception of his new team. “When you have the advantage in end-zone time, that can wear down teams when you stick to it.”
Coach Alain Vigneault juggled things intermittently through the match that Anton Khudobin came very close to stealing in the Carolina net, but the coach indicated he would likely stick with his current alignment for the foreseeable future. That means keeping the Mats Zuccarello-Derick Brassard-Benoit Pouliot, Stepan-Nash-Chris Kreider and Hagelin-Richards-St. Louis units intact.
Nash has moved up to the second penalty-killing unit with Stepan in the wake of Ryan Callahan’s departure to Tampa Bay. The big man took advantage of the opportunity, motoring up the left side before finding McDonagh for the blast from the top of the right circle that tied the match on the Rangers’ third short-handed goal in two games.
“You always say specialty teams win games at this time of year,” said Nash, whose team killed a 43-second Candy Cane five-on-three in the first period. “That was certainly true in this one.”
What’s true, too, is the Rangers overcame adversity to win their first game following the trade of their captain, Callahan, for the Lightning’s captain, St. Louis.
“This is how you play in the playoffs,” 2004 Cup-winner St. Louis said. “We want to play that way now so we don’t have to turn the switch on.”