Perhaps Brandon Dubinsky, who scored twice in last night’s 3-2 Rangers victory over the Blackhawks to increase his team-leading total to seven in 11 games, was thinking about two years ago, when he and linemates Aaron Voros and Nik Zherdev were all the early-season rage.
“I’m a little scared to talk about lines [clicking] because I’ve had these conversations before, but there are definitely things happening with us,” No. 17 said after going to the net for a pair of slam-dunks on setups both times from linemates Ryan Callahan and Artem Anisimov. “We have constant communication about what kind of plays we’re looking for if we stay together.
“It’s becoming more and more instinctive, but that’s because we’re always talking. If I’m coming out from behind, I’m telling Cally and Artie, ‘This is where I want you, I don’t want to have to look, you be there.’ It’s trial and error and communication leading to us being instinctive.”
The instinct after the defending Cup champions — a pale facsimile after the cap-induced summer cannibalism that ate away at the squad — negated Dubinsky’s two goals on Patrick Sharp’s softie that handcuffed Henrik Lundqvist and knotted the score at 6:08 of the third was to wait and see how the Rangers would blow another one at the Garden.
But not this time, not when Erik Christensen whipped one up top past Marty Turco from the high slot after a neat move off the wing for what coach John Tortorella called “a big league goal” just 26 seconds later.
“It was kind of a feeling that the air was sucked out of the building when they tied it,” said Christensen. “But getting that goal gave us a second chance to tighten up in our own end so we could pull it off and that’s what we did.”
For the first time this season, Tortorella united Marc Staal and Dan Girardi as a shutdown pair at the start of the second period, using them with the Anisimov line and matching the five-man unit against the Kane-Jonathan Toews-Troy Brouwer/Tomas Kopecky-Duncan Keith-Keith Seabrook quintet.
“The challenge there, especially with Kane, is that they love to pull up and hit the trailing defensemen for back-door plays,” said Staal, who was on for 3:29 of the final 3:51. “I thought we did a pretty good job of defending that.”
Girardi, who tied Callahan with a game-high six blocks in a game-high 27:23, was outstanding again. Staal was better last night as his partner than he has been with Michal Rozsival, just as Michael Del Zotto has thrived on Girardi’s left side.
The Rangers blocked 33 shots — 27 through two periods — after blocking 35 in Saturday’s 2-0 victory in Toronto. That’s all well and good, but consistently inflated numbers of blocked shots means the Rangers don’t have the puck enough and are defending too much.
Saturday, the Leafs launched 92 attempted shots to the Rangers’ 35. Last night, it was 78-49, Chicago. The forecheck cycle game comes and goes. The 6-4-1 Rangers aren’t likely to thrive spending so much time in the defensive zone, but it is a measure of progress that a victory can be picked apart.
“We’ve been hemmed in our own end too much the last couple of games and we have to clean that up by thinking more clearly,” said Staal. “But it really was huge for us to close this one out.”