Maybe John Tortorella should rip his team more often.
A night after the Rangers coach tore into his players’ pitiful effort after a 2-1 Garden loss to the Islanders, the Blueshirts responded with a strong showing in the second of a home-and-home, winning 5-2 at the Coliseum.
Of course, when Henrik Lundqvist plays like he did last night, it can make everyone look better.
Asked what impact Tortorella’s tirade had, Lundqvist said: “It’s more for ourselves. We need to feel good again. We need to get confidence. We need to get two points. It’s not so much what guys around us say, what [Tortorella] says, even though we listen, but it’s the guys in here that have to do it. We play for each other.”
For a night, anyway, that worked, as the Rangers played without the benched Wade Redden and Ales Kotalik and survived another slow start to snap a five-game winless streak.
The Isles recorded the first nine shots on goal, thanks in part to a pair of early Rangers penalties that they killed.
“They come hard,” Tortorella said of the Isles. “They’re a hard-working hockey team.”
Last night, that wasn’t enough.
“We had to respond after the last game,” Ryan Callahan said. “We showed some character.”
After those penalties were killed, Callahan scored the first of his two power-play goals to give the Rangers an unlikely 1-0 lead after the first, despite being outshot 14-4.
“We didn’t talk about the shots [differential],” Tortorella said.
It might have been a topic had Lundqvist not played like he did early on, when he denied the Isles repeatedly.
“I’ve been there before in this building,” said Lundqvist, who made 35 saves. “They came out flying. Pucks were everywhere. You just have to stand tall. There’s no way they can play like that for 60 minutes.”
Dwayne Roloson was not nearly as sharp in net for the Isles. Starting his season-high fifth straight game, Roloson surrendered three goals on the first five shots he faced, including the two to Callahan.
Chris Drury added an even-strength goal to make it 2-0 and, after the Isles’ Andrew MacDonald made it 3-1, Marian Gaborik added the Blueshirts’ third power-play goal of the night.
“It’s no secret it’s a little bit easier when you score goals,” Lundqvist said of the Rangers, who had been held to two or fewer in their previous seven before last night.
“You can relax a little more. It’s good for everybody. It’s a big relief we finally got two points.”
The next challenge is to do it again.
“We have to do it more consistently,” Tortorella said. “We can’t be easily satisfied. We need to raise the bar of what we’re going to be.”