Two years ago the Rangers came out of the lockout with a team built around Jaromir Jagr and a weaving Euro-style designed to take advantage of the new-era NHL new rules with which the captain and running mates Martin Straka and Michael Nylander had been exploiting since their respective childhoods.
The Rangers were both a revelation in ending their seven-season playoff drought and likely the league’s best team into the Olympics. But a late-season crash followed by a first-round sweep by the Devils brought changes in personnel and in style. A more traditional north-south club in 2006-07, the Rangers would win a playoff round, but still were 10 tournament wins shy of a championship.
As such, there were more changes this summer. Free agent Nylander got the four years from the Caps (and Oilers) he couldn’t get from the Rangers, and thus departed, leaving Jagr with one less simpatico linemate. When Straka went down with a broken finger in the season’s seventh game, No. 68 often seemed adrift.
It is no coincidence, then, that the Rangers entered last night’s Garden match against the Islanders as the NHL’s lowest-scoring team overall and at even-strength.
It is no coincidence, either, that Jagr has found a great portion of the rest of him since Straka’s return three games ago.
“It’s not that the team went away from my style; it’s just that I need one player on my line who thinks the way I do,” said Jagr, who scored the first goal and set up the final goal in the Rangers’ 4-2 victory over the Islanders last night at the Garden.
With Jagr often a dominant force receiving aid and comfort from not only the veteran Straka, but from freshman center Brandon Dubinsky, who also had a goal and an assist while asserting himself physically with and without the puck, the Rangers registered their first victory against the Islanders this season after three regulation defeats.
“A team doesn’t have to all play the same way as long as the players understand what the coach wants from them,” Jagr said. “In hockey, it’s almost like you have four small teams of five instead of one big team. Marty plays the way I like to play. He waits for me. He holds the puck. He knows where I am.
“When I’m with Marty, I can play the way I always play.”
The Rangers rode Jagr’s line, they rode a power play performance in which they went 2-for-5 after going 3-for-39 in their previous eight games, and they rode big-save goaltending from Henrik Lundqvist. But the Rangers won last night by getting themselves down and dirty, and winning the battles they had lost in their first three meetings.
“I liked our second- and third-effort,” Tom Renney said. “I liked our presence around their net and our resolve in the defensive zone.”
It was a game that serves as a reminder-if one is ever needed-of just how important Jagr remains to the Rangers, and how important it is for the Rangers to see to it that No. 68 is put in positions where he can succeed.
“There’s a marked difference in Jaromir’s energy on the ice [since Straka’s return],” Renney said. “The previous two years we had one line that could do special things, and you never want to confine that.
“Now, with Marty back, we might have that again.”
Rangers 4 Islanders 2