Larry Brooks

Larry Brooks

Rangers need to adjust attitude, not lineup, for Game 3

PHILADELPHIA — So now that Brad Richards admitted the Flyers not only won Sunday’s hockey game but the Hunger Game as well, one can be assured the Rangers have addressed the issue of the level of intensity that will be required the rest of the way in their first-round best-of-seven that continues here Tuesday night with the series locked at one-apiece.

“They probably were a little more desperate than we were,” Richards acknowledged following Monday’s optional practice at the Garden. “Maybe we let up just a touch.

“Our level of play has to jump up a lot more than it did from Game 1 to Game 2.”

The Rangers talked about the challenge of playing these next two matches in a loud building. That will be a new experience in this series. For while the Garden may indeed be the world’s most famous arena, it is now among the quietest in North America.

The leather lungs have either been priced out or are too far away from the ice in the transformed arena that offers all the amenities of home to the customers who pay substantial prices to get into the building. In the old days, you couldn’t go three periods without a Potvin chant. Now, you can go weeks without one.

The Rangers had their biggest home ice advantage of the year at Yankee Stadium, where they were the road team but embraced the opportunity to play two games within four days on the big stage of the Big Ballpark in The Bronx and rode the attendant emotion to consecutive late January victories that in large measure kick-started their impressive run to the finish line.

The Blueshirts are in Philadelphia secure in the knowledge they have been an outstanding road team. Mats Zuccarello talked about getting one victory here, when of course the objective should be to get two, Tuesday and Friday.

Hunger won’t be an issue, nor will a noisy building. But the Rangers will face a matchup issue without last change, and not just against the Flyers’ top line centered by Claude Giroux. For on Sunday, the Blueshirts had a problem against a newly created, strong, physical trio featuring Brayden Schenn between Wayne Simmonds and Vincent Lecavalier that skated together intermittently.

Coach Alain Vigneault has not been a slave to matchups during the season. It is as unreasonable to ask him to become one now as it would be to ask the Rangers to become a grinding, dump-and-chase team. Certain teams — the Jacques Lemaire Devils, for instance — lived by on-the-fly quick changes. These Rangers are not one of those teams.

“If you look at our road record [25-14-2], we have that because we continue to play the same way, the high-tempo, north-south game. We roll our lines real quickly,” Vigneault said Monday. “Obviously in every game we play, home or on the road, there are certain matchups we are looking for, [but] more of matchups we don’t want. That is probably a better way of expressing it.”

A still better way would have been to say what he intends to do when the Flyers send Giroux or Schenn on against the Richards unit with Carl Hagelin and Jesper Fast on the flanks, but the coach wasn’t enabling such speculation, deferring when asked if he might change his approach for Game 3.

“If this was a regular-season game, I would probably share my answer with you,” he said. “Since this is not a regular-season game and there’s so little separating the teams, if I have any inclination, I would not share it with you.”

Which is a far, far more polite way of saying: “None of your business.”

Vigneault has to be careful here. Matchups drive a game. But shuttling players on and off to gain or avoid certain matches can be more disruptive than after-whistle face-washes and endless scrums. The Rangers are built on rhythm. Nothing destroys that more than constant changes.

The Rangers require more fortitude for Game 3 than they displayed in Game 2. They must match, if not exceed, the Flyers’ commitment. That is the change that is necessary.