DAN THE MAN: Dan Girardi fires a shot past Senators goalie Craig Anderson for what proved to be the game-winning goal in the Rangers’ series-clinching win. (NHLI via Getty Images)
This may have been only the first step in the journey of a million miles to the middle of June and the Stanley Cup, but what a momentous first step it was for the Rangers, who won a thrilling Game 7 against the Senators the only way they know how:
As Black-and-Blueshirts.
This 2-1 triumph in front of a Garden crowd whose roars created a rolling crescendo of noise was not only a springboard into the Eastern Conference semifinals against the Capitals that will begin on Broadway tomorrow, it was a reaffirmation of the collective soul of the team that finished first in the East with 109 points.
“There was a level of desperation there when they kept coming at us those last 10 minutes and had us pinned in for shifts at a time, but we knew that if we just played the way we play that we would be fine,” said Dan Girardi, who not only played a massive game in his own end, but scored at 9:04 of the second period to give the Rangers a 2-0 lead and it proved to be the winner.
“We clogged the middle, we kept them to the outside, we got in their lanes, we blocked shots, we got in their faces and when they were able to get shots through, Hanky [Lundqvist] made the big saves like he has all year,” said Girardi, who had three of his team’s 23 blocked shots.
The Senators got one goal back before the end of the second, when Daniel Alfredsson scored on a power play drive at 11:34. Do the math: The Rangers, who had lost two games already in which they’d held a lead, had 28:26 in which to protect and preserve in order to advance past the first round for the first time since 2008, when Tom Renney was behind the bench.
“We were a confident group going into the third,” said Ryan Callahan, who combined with Derek Stepan and Chris Kreider to form an irrepressible, indefatigable unit that was on the puck on seemingly every shift.
“We knew we would face a desperate team in the third period. We knew they would surge playing for their season, but we also knew what we could do and we knew we had Hank.”
Lundqvist was outstanding in the face of the Ottawa surge, with his most spectacular save coming just 4:30 into the third, when he got his right shoulder on Milan Michalek’s point-blank drive. There was another beauty at 9:50, when the King got his left pad out on Filip Kuba’s left circle shot after the Rangers simply could not clear the zone.
And then yet another denial on Michalek, who had no kick coming when Lundqvist got his blocker on a wrist shot from in front with 5:45 to play and the Garden in an uproar that could have been heard all the way up on the Rideau Canal.
“When you work so hard, you want to keep playing and you don’t want to think this could be the end or how much this means to you or the fans or the players,” the King said. “You try to block it out, but sometimes it’s hard to block it.
“The way we played the whole game, it was just a war the last five minutes.”
Lundqvist moves on to the second round for the third time, after doing so in 2007 and 2008. He, Callahan, Girardi, Marc Staal (who scored the first goal off a spectacular feed from Stepan at 4:46 of the second) and Brandon Dubinsky (who did not play the final 11 minutes after appearing to suffer a leg injury) are the only Rangers to have previously won a round wearing the Blueshirt.
“I said after we lost [in the first round to Washington in five games] last year, that time flies and you have to grab onto every opportunity because you don’t know how many you are going to get,” Lundqvist said. “I came into this season determined that this was going to be the year we did this as a group.
“When we went into Ottawa losing 3-2, facing elimination and played the way we did [in winning Game 6 on Monday] I could tell we had something special as a team and that overcoming that would make us stronger.”
Eight teams win in the first round. Only one team wins the Cup. Last night was just the first step. But what a momentous step it was on this Night to Remember on Broadway.
larry.brooks@nypost.com