BUFFALO — BUFFALO — They don’t award any extra points for style in the NHL.
Which is why the Rangers were pleased enough to take the two points they earned with Thursday’s 3-1 victory over the hapless Sabres and get out of town without looking back despite a profound lack of artistry on the ice.
“I don’t think the level of play was too high,” said Brad Richards, who scored an important third-period power-play goal when the Blueshirts were teetering with a 1-0 lead.
“Nights where you might not be at your best, you have to find a way to win,” Marc Staal said after the victory over a 30th-overall, 6-21-2 Buffalo team that averages a puny 1.59 goals-per-game. “It’s not always going to be pretty, but we’ll sure take it.”
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so one can excuse Henrik Lundqvist for stating he thought the Rangers played well in front of him.
The netminder wasn’t very busy over the first 35 minutes, but made a pair of stellar saves late in the second to uphold a 1-0 lead his team had gained on a gorgeous breakaway goal by Rick Nash at 17:47 of the first, and then made a pair of critical breakaway stops sandwiching the Richards’ power-play goal at 8:29 of the second, the first on a Cody Hodgson backhand and the second on a Steve Ott forehand.
“It’s a perfect scenario, for a goalie to stop a breakaway and then have your team score on the power play,” Lundqvist said. “It’s a different game if they tie it up on that first one.
“It was a pretty calm night the first half, but you have to be there when mistakes happen because they are going to happen.”
Lundqvist, who lost his shutout with 2:06 to play after his own attempted clear took a bad bounce off the glass, is 3-5 in his last eight starts and 9-11 on the season. The Rangers, 6-6 in their last 12, are 15-14 heading into Saturday’s match at the Garden against the Devils.
“It was an important game for the team and for me,” Lundqvist said. “We have to start winning, that’s the bottom line. We have to put wins together.”
Coach Alain Vigneault earlier in the week challenged his core players to pick up their respective games and lead the way. Nash, who has been the Rangers’ best player since returning on Nov. 19 from his concussion-induced 17-game absence, sure led when he beat Ryan Miller on a nifty against the grain near-side tuck to finish a crisp touch relay from Derek Stepan after a neat breakout from Ryan McDonagh.
“When a coach says something like that, there’s a reason,” Nash told The Post. “For sure, I took it personally.
“I’ve been part of my team’s leadership group for just about my whole career and I try and lead by example,” he said. “I think that’s a big part of my role here.”
Apart from Nash’s breakthough, neither team was able to generate much of anything through the first two periods, with play at a seeming standstill much of the way. It is difficult to imagine anyone who might have gone to his or her first NHL game on Thursday will rush back anytime soon for a second.
But that isn’t the Rangers’ responsibility. Their charge is simple — it’s to win. Well, it’s also to learn from their mistakes without obsessing about the rearview mirror.
“When we had the [1-0] lead we just played with it instead of trying to do more with it,” Richards said. “Overall we have to do a better job after we score a goal.”
The match, of course, was the first for Lundqvist after signing his seven-year, $59.5 million contract extension that kicks in next year. It was also back to goaltending for The King after a busy week of everything but, which had begun with him on the bench for a second straight match.
“It was weird,” Lundqvist said. “[Wednesday] was such a big day and emotional day for me, but at the same time I couldn’t be too happy because [there was this game coming up].
“I want more wins,” he said. “When we keep going and keep winning, then I can really enjoy what happened [Wednesday].”