NHL

Rangers need to stay disciplined in Game 2 vs. Flyers

The mantra for the Rangers is “whistle to whistle.” As in, no nonsense in post-whistle scrums that might result in penalties.

It is another way to define discipline — one of the best ways to define the Blueshirts, not only in Thursday’s 4-1 Game 1 opening-round victory over the Flyers, but throughout the course of the 82-game regular season.

“We’ve been whistle to whistle all year long,” coach Alain Vigneault said following Saturday’s practice at the Garden. “Nothing changes for us.”

The Flyers certainly will make changes in their game plan for Sunday afternoon’s Game 2 in Manhattan, so the Rangers will be obliged to fine-tune their approach as they aim for a 2-0 edge in advance of Tuesday’s Game 3 in Philadelphia.

But the Blueshirts are not obsessing over the Flyers. The Rangers’ attention is focused on the details of their own game, one of which is avoiding senseless and/or lazy penalties.

The Rangers were shorthanded 232 times during the season, second-fewest to the Sharks’ 219. They were shorthanded no more than twice in 19 of their final 41 matches. On Thursday, they were down a man only once, when Ryan McDonagh was sent to the box in the first minute of the third period for high-sticking Scott Hartnell with the score tied 1-1.

“I was thinking on the bench that we’d better kill this off or we’d be in for a battle,” Brad Richards said. “If we hadn’t, we might be here talking about something else.”

The Blueshirts — third best on the penalty kill during the season at 85.3 percent, behind the Devils and Blues — killed off the penalty in style, with the Flyers unable to get a shot against Henrik Lundqvist.

Indeed, the kill unit refused to give up the puck as the clock wound down on the power play, with Rick Nash looking like a latter-day Billy Fairbairn, ragging it up and down the left side before pitching the puck back to his defense as the power play expired peacefully.

“The idea is to keep the puck away from them, isn’t it?” Nash, who has emerged as a penalty-killing weapon, asked rhetorically. “Why give it up if you don’t have to?”

They gave up little to the Flyers on the kill and at even-strength. The Rangers’ 69-42 overall advantage in shot attempts was skewed by a 20-2 edge over the final 12:25, but Philadelphia rarely was able to set up in the New York end.

Again, much of that was a function of Rangers puck possession, and especially in the matchup against the Flyers’ top line of Hartnell, Claude Giroux and Jakub Voracek that was discombobulated most of the night as Vigneault mixed his matches.

The Nash-Derek Stepan-Martin St. Louis line and the McDonagh-Dan Girardi defense pair got most of the work against the Giroux unit, but Vigneault also sprinkled in the Brian Boyle-Dom Moore-Derek Dorsett line and Marc Staal-Anton Stralman tandem against Philadelphia’s most dynamic and creative combination.

“For sure I’m more concerned with my defensive responsibilities against a line like that,” said Nash, who has dramatically stepped his play without the puck since the Olympics. “But it’s also true that the best way to defend against players like that is to have the puck in the offensive zone.

“It’s the same with our [more offense-minded] guys. You don’t want to be playing in your end of the ice.”

The Rangers recognize the importance of holding serve, and they understand the effort that was good enough to earn them a Game 1 victory isn’t likely to suffice in Game 2.

“I would anticipate that they are going to be a lot different,” Brad Richards said of the Flyers’ approach Sunday. “We can’t get caught relying on Game 1.

“There’s going to be a whole new level of intensity and a whole new level of speed, and we have to be ready for that. There’s going to be more hitting. We’re going to have to be a half-step to step quicker.”

And equally as disciplined.