NHL

Rangers talk of hope, but look like beaten team

The pallid faces, the sunken eyes, the slumped shoulders and the hoarse voices.

The Rangers wore masks of despondency Tuesday afternoon at a sparsely attended optional practice on the eve of Game 4 of the Stanley Cup finals, the eve of the game that could be the last of their season. The Blueshirts are down to the mighty Kings in the best-of-seven series, 3-0, having lost Game 3 on Monday night by a margin of 3-0, delivering a total downer in the first Cup final game on Broadway in 20 years.

So even if the Rangers were saying all the right things on this day – speaking of hope and the single-minded focus on winning one game – forgive them if it came through a solemn veneer.

“We’re down 3-0, we’re all lacking sleep – this is tough,” coach Alain Vigneault said. “I didn’t expect my players today to be cheery and upbeat. We’re in the Stanley Cup final and we’re down 3-0. You don’t get a lot of these opportunities. Excuse us if today we’re not real cheery, but tomorrow I can tell you we’re going to show up.”

Rangers coach Alain Vigneault talks to the media.AP

Wednesday at the Garden is a day of reckoning for the Rangers, a day when not only their season is on the line, but their pride. At this stage in the game, there is no shame in getting swept, but there is still enough belief in the home locker room that one win might just go a long way.

“Well, we know what can happen if we do win a game, but you don’t want to look too far ahead,” said alternate captain Dan Girardi, reemerging as a public leader amid some fearless play stitched with bad breaks. “It’s a big task we have ahead of us, but it’s just the typical ‘one game at a time’ [mentality] and try to win one tomorrow and go from there.”

So there is the mantra all teams live by in this situation, that the focus can be nowhere else but on a single performance. There are four teams in the history of the NHL to come back from 3-0 – including the Kings this season in the first round against the Sharks – but the only team to do it in the Cup final was those pesky 1942 Maple Leafs.

We all remember them, no?

The fact is historical possibility didn’t make this day of rest any easier.

“Today is pretty much impossible to be upbeat,” a morbid Brad Richards said, “but once we get to game day, we are back into our routine, we’ll be excited about getting back on the ice. We’ll get back in the battle and see where it goes.”

The Rangers think they have what it takes that single game.

“Belief is everything,” veteran forward Martin St. Louis said. “Right now, it looks like a big mountain to climb, but once you get in the battle, get your first shift and get in the game, win a game, and now it’s 3-1 and you go from there.

“You can’t look at trying to win four. We’re trying to win one.”

It would be easy to say that was the Rangers attitude when they were most recently in this must-win situation, facing a 3-1 series hole against the Penguins in the second round. But even Vigneault admitted “at that time, we were going through a different situation,” meaning that the team was dealing with the unexpected death of St. Louis’ mother, France, just before a possible elimination Game 5.

The Blueshirts rallied around that heartbreaking event, and reeled off five wins in a row that got them off a good start in the conference finals and on their way to this grand stage, where the sport’s ultimate prize hangs in the balance.

“Whether you’ve been here or not,” St. Louis said, “you understand your back is against the wall.”

In that dire position, the Rangers were not in the best of moods – and who could blame them? The only thing that matters to them at this point is one game, because that is all that can matter.

“You know, all the talk that we can have around trying to spin this any way you want, 29 other teams like to be in our spot,” Vigneault said. “At the end of the day, for us right now, it’s about one game. That’s as simple and logical and realistic as I can put it for you. We have to focus on one game and that’s what we’re going to do.”