NHL

Lundqvist, Rangers dominate Flyers to take 2-1 series lead

PHILADELPHIA — Out of a side room came a familiar gruff voice.

“Henrik,” it said, then louder. “Henrik.”

The Rangers goalie was unwrapping the tape from his skates in the visitor’s locker room at the Wells Fargo Center late on Tuesday night, and looked up. He had just backstopped his team to an impressive 4-1 win over the Flyers in Game 3 of their first-round playoff series, taking a 2-1 edge in this best-of-seven contest, a contest that had just ratcheted up the intensity tenfold.

And what Lundqvist saw was the bearded face of the owner, Jim Dolan, holding out his curled-up hand for a fist pound.

“It’s a fast sport,” Lundqvist would say minutes later, after stopping 31 of the 32 shots he faced. “Just one shift, one goal, one incident can change the momentum, change the game. … If you start relaxing and think it’s a done deal, it can bite you.”

Relaxing, well, that is something that can be forgotten here, and certainly forgotten for Friday’s Game 4.

Because what happened in this tide-turning adventure was the Rangers found a way to push back against the Flyers’ brutish ways without going too far over the edge; found a way to use their speed and skill without coming off as weak; and, above all, found a way to want it more than the team that out=willed them in Philadelphia’s 4-2 win in Game 2 at the Garden on Sunday, the win that had stolen the Rangers hard-earned home-ice advantage.

“We knew that this was going to be a tough environment, and I knew our guys were not only well prepared for it, but I think they thrived on it,” said coach Alain Vigneault, as this South Philly megalith was clad from rafter-to-rafter in bright orange and went through waves of loud emotions, the final one being disdain as fans filed out the doors with their team’s best efforts thwarted, the Rangers home-ice advantage yet again restored.

“They wanted this opportunity. We wanted to come in here and win a game,” Vigneault said. “Win tonight. Our sole focus was on tonight, and that’s what we did.”

For a while that looked iffy there, and boy, was there a moment in the second period when it was easy to flash back 40 years, as it seemed Jakub Voracek was morphing into Dave Schultz and Carl Hagelin was playing the unfortunate role of Dale Rolfe. Yet after Voracek tried to decapitate Hagelin with a missed cross-check, and after the two dropped their gloves for what was a resounding Voracek victory over the smaller Hagelin, the tide was not turned in favor of the hack-happy Flyers.

Instead, by that point, the Rangers were already staked to a 3-1 lead. They got out to the same 2-0 lead as they did on Sunday, this time via goals from Derek Stepan and Martin St. Louis. Then, just as they did on Sunday, they gave up a momentum-killing goal before the end of the first, this time Mark Streit playing spoiler.

“My first thought was, ‘Let’s not do this again’,” Lundqvist said. “It was extremely important for us to have a strong second period.”

And so in the second, the Rangers got a rare occurrence — a long, bomb of a slap shot from Dan Girardi that got past Ray Emery’s glove and gave them a 3-1 lead. From there, they weathered the storm, blocking shots (28 in all) and killing penalties (5-for-5 over 7:19) that made it seem as if John Tortorella was priming for an absurdly terse press conference.

When Dan Carcillo tapped in the final tally with 9:07 hanging on the clock and making it 4-1, that was all she wrote for this night.

“Every little thing matters,” Lundqvist said, smiling, knowing that his team at least acted on that for this important evening — even being rewarded with fist pound.