The road to the Stanley Cup finals for the Rangers was bumpy, took quite a bit of time to smooth out and often was littered with doubt.
It weaved its way through opening the season with nine games on the road, a stretch during which the Rangers (exiled from the Garden as renovations were completed) lost six and were the opponent for three different teams’ home openers before hosting their home opener 25 days after the season began.
It went through getting to know a new coach, Alain Vigneault, the polar opposite of the man he replaced (John Tortorella) and who knew almost no one on the team before he arrived.
It continued through the unimaginable thoughts that Henrik Lundqvist had lost his goaltending magic at age 32 as the team was outscored 20-6 in its first four games.
It carried on through various injuries to key players and extended slumps from others.
And it went through the need for a late-season surge to merely qualify for the playoff tournament.
With each of these obstacles, though, came a building block that slowly bonded this team into what you saw on the Madison Square Garden ice for their Eastern Conference finals-clinching Game 6 victory over the Canadiens.
The Rangers won 1-0 on Thursday night to advance to their first Stanley Cup finals in 20 years…and they did it as one.
Their strength as they try to win the Stanley Cup for the second time in 73 years is how they feel about — and fight for — each other.
Twenty playoff games (nearly a quarter of the regular season), including two series that went the seven-game limit, will do that for a team if it sticks together the way the Rangers have.
And now: The rewards.
“As a team, we’ve really rallied around each other,” said defenseman Dan Girardi, the second-longest-tenured Ranger at eight years.
“This has been a lot of fun — especially with this group of guys,” said defenseman Marc Staal, a Ranger for seven years. “We’ve been a close group all year long and we’ve gotten even tighter throughout these playoffs. Obviously, we want to keep it going.”
There are a lot of things that have kept this going for the Rangers, beginning with Lundqvist, who wasn’t finished back in October after all.
The strength Martin St. Louis displayed following the loss of his mother in the middle of the Pittsburgh series and the subsequent inspiration he provided to his new teammates by playing has been immeasurable. The sight of the entire team standing by St. Louis at the funeral was evidence of that.
That impatient countdown of games without a goal by St. Louis since his trade-deadline acquisition seems like three years ago now, doesn’t it?
It seems the rate at which his new teammates have gotten to know St. Louis has been accelerated during this playoff run — through both his leadership off the ice and his performance on it (in the postseason, he’s tied for the team lead in goals with six and points with 13).
Another event that strengthened this team’s bond was the way Derek Stepan, the Rangers’ top-line center, returned so quickly after having his jaw broken on a late hit he suffered in Game 3. He sat out Game 4 and was back on the ice for Game 5, during which he scored two goals.
In Game 6, it was fitting that Dominic Moore, who scored the only goal, was one of the heroes, because he is a player who needed the nurturing of his teammates after missing the 2012-13 season following the tragic death of his wife, Katie, due to a rare form of liver cancer.
“Dom’s goal kind of sums up our team,” Girardi said. “Marty goes through tough times with his mother and then he scores some really timely goals and then Dom comes up with that huge goal.”
Across the dressing room from where Girardi spoke was Moore, wearing the “Broadway Hat” that is awarded after each Rangers win to the player who was — to borrow soccer jargon — the man of the match.
“We all take turns wearing it throughout the year, but I think this was a perfect example of a team effort,” Moore said, reticent to consider himself a hero of Game 6. “When it’s a one-goal game like this, every little bit counts and everybody makes a difference. So whoever wears the hat, it doesn’t really matter.”
But it does matter, because that silly-looking hat is one of the things — albeit minor — that bonds this group.
“It’s a funny-looking hat, but you want to be rewarded that hat,” Brian Boyle, who had the key assist on the Moore goal, said. “It just goes to show you that our team’s a pretty tight-knit group. It’s a cool thing we have.”
It’s a cool thing these Rangers have going right now.