New York Rangers Arron Asham celebrates after scoring against the Washington Capitals during the first period. (UPI)
WASHINGTON — Everything was hanging over the heads of the Rangers — their expectations, their history, their penchant for pulling on heartstrings and playing the tightest of games in the most dire situations. It was all poised to drop and smash their season like it never even began.
But the team that came out last night at the Verizon Center was having none of that, no sir. The Rangers played like a team filled with confidence pulled from some hidden well deep within their psyches, someplace that was filled long before this season of middling results and tepid enthusiasm.
The result was a 5-0 win over the Capitals in Game 7 of this first-round series, a win that exorcised the franchise demon of never having won a Game 7 on the road and one that advanced the Blueshirts to a second-round matchup against the Bruins.
And again, as if it needs repeating, the foundation from which it was all built was the goalie, Henrik Lundqvist, stealing one in a 1-0 Game 6 shutout on Sunday afternoon and following it up less than 24 hours later with his eighth career postseason goose egg, never allowing the Capitals to breathe life into this once-electric building, stopping all 35 Capitals shots.
“Honestly, our room is real confident,” forward Derick Brassard said before the game. “We have great leadership, everything is positive. Just before Game 6, we had a short practice, and I thought the room was really, really good. Everything is positive. It’s like another game for us, and that’s why I think we’re going to get the win.”
Brassard proved to be a hockey sage, smiling as he said it and never seeming to be spitting cliché. The 25-year-old playoff rookie may be on to something, finding his confidence and looseness through naïveté.
“This is how you hopefully become a playoff savvy team, by going through these experiences,” coach John Tortorella said. “We have some of that going through what we went through last year and I think some of the guys, they don’t have a clue what they’re doing, they don’t have a clue about pressure. Sometimes, that’s good.”
What’s good is how the Rangers started the second period, getting a hard-working goal from Taylor Pyatt 3:24 in, followed 2:10 later by a deflected slap shot from Michael Del Zotto getting past Braden Holtby for a 3-0 lead. At that point, it seemed like a given they would run away with this one, and did they ever.
To start the third, captain Ryan Callahan needed just 13 seconds to make it 4-0 on a nifty sharp-angle backhand, followed just over six minutes later by Mats Zuccarello, knifing one by Holtby to make it 5-0 and sending most of the 18,506 heading for doors.
“A few games ago, we were saying the first team to beat the other team on the road was going to win the series,” said Brassard, whose team took the Capitals home Game 7 record to 2-7.
The game started with a rather tepid first 10 minutes, both teams playing more a conservative style rather than attacking. Yet that all went out the window with about 11:30 remaining in the period when Alex Ovechkin — held pointless for a career-worst fifth straight postseason game — took it upon himself to become a one-man hit parade, and the pace picked up a bit.
Then Lundqvist made a great stop on a slight breakaway from Mike Green, and the puck went quickly the other way on the stick of rookie Chris Kreider. He made a slick drop pass to Arron Asham, who netted a high slap shot to give the Rangers a 1-0 lead, setting the tone that this Rangers team wasn’t about to go easy.
“I think there’s an advantage for the home team,” Tortorella said in the afternoon, “and quite honestly, we’re the visiting team and we really don’t care.”
bcyrgalis@nypost.com