The poster is about 4 feet tall and 3 feet wide, and it has been hanging in the Rangers’ locker room now for over a week.
A vacant cutout of the Stanley Cup takes up most of the frame. “Above and Beyond” is written above it. “EARN IT” is in all capitals below. The background is a montage of great moments from the Rangers season.
And now, after Wednesday night’s thrilling 2-1 win over the Flyers at the Garden in Game 7 of this first-round series, the four pieces that make up the foundation of the Cup are in place.
“It’s what you play for,” said Martin St. Louis, one of only three players on the roster who has raised the Cup. “You play for this time of year, and to keep going is great.”
With the Rangers’ fourth consecutive Game 7 win in the past three seasons — their sixth Game 7 win at the Garden, keeping them undefeated in these decisive games on home ice — the next step is getting on a plane to head to Pittsburgh, where the Penguins await, poised and ready to play host for Game 1 of the second round on Friday night.
“Seven games or five games, teams are so close now,” said Brad Richards, the alternate captain who lifted the Cup with St. Louis in Tampa in 2004. “They’re a good team, they played us hard, and it took seven. It doesn’t really matter.”
No, it doesn’t matter how the Rangers got to this spot, not as much as it has in years past. On their way to the conference finals two seasons ago, Richards and his teammates played a hard-edged and draining style under coach John Tortorella and eventually burned out.
This is not that team.
Though they blocked 22 shots on Wednesday — none more impressive than the two from Anton Stralman followed by another from St. Louis on a crucial penalty kill midway through the second period with the Rangers desperately holding onto a 1-0 lead — this team is predicated on speed and skill rather than sheer will and sacrifice.
A clear example came less than a minute after that penalty ended, as Benoit Pouliot burst from the box and sped past Zac Rinaldo, tipping in a great cross-ice pass from Derick Brassard to give the Rangers what would turn out to be the game-winning goal.
“We played a really good second,” Richards said of the period when the Rangers outshot the Flyers 18-5 and established the two-goal cushion, the first goal coming from Dan Carcillo on a seeing-eye pass from Mats Zuccarello 3:06 in. “We just kept the pace up, short shifts, everybody involved. We killed a couple penalties, buried some goals.”
The Flyers didn’t fold up the tent, either. Instead, rookie winger Jason Akeson cut the lead to 2-1 just over four minutes into the third when he had his initial shot blocked by Marc Staal, but then corralled the rebound and beat Henrik Lundqvist blocker side.
“You try not to think too much about the Game 7 situation, you try to focus on the things that’s going to help you help the team — stopping the puck,” said Lundqvist, who finished with 26 saves and now has a career record of 4-1 in Game 7s. “When they scored that goal, I knew it was going to be an intense game.”
Intense, but the Rangers shut the door and now they’re on to the second round for the third consecutive year. What sits in front of them is a Penguins team that can match their skill a lot more closely than the Flyers, and a team with the pedigree Philadelphia desperately lacked.
“You don’t dwell on losses and you don’t cherish wins too much in the playoffs,” Richards said. “We’ll talk about this for the next hour, get some rest, then get back to work with a new challenge.”
A new challenge, indeed. That poster still has 12 remaining pieces to be filled.