COLUMBUS — Friday night’s match wasn’t going to be a referendum on the years of cross-pollination between the Rangers and Blue Jackets that began with the 2008 unfortunate exchange in which the Blueshirts sent away Fedor Tyutin and received Nikolai Zherdev in return.
No, Friday’s match carried significance well beyond that scope, with the Rangers and Blue Jackets neck-and-neck at the top of the homestretch in what essentially has been distilled to a six-team race for four available playoff spots in the East, with only three points separating top to bottom with three weeks to go in the season.
“I’ve got to believe that with everybody’s environment, the people we know, everybody is talking about: ‘Did you see last night? Did you see what happened?’” coach Alain Vigneault said following the morning skate. “So everybody is up to date on what’s going on, but our focus needs to be on the game at hand.”
The Jackets — with former Rangers Tyutin, Brandon Dubinsky and Artem Anisimov playing key roles as they have all season — were coming off a stirring 3-2 victory in Montreal on Thursday. The Rangers — with former Jackets Rick Nash, Derick Brassard, John Moore and Anton Stralman suiting up — had been in Columbus since flying in the day after Tuesday’s 8-4 victory in Ottawa.
“We’ve got a real tough opponent, probably one of the hardest-working and highest-compete-level teams in the league,” Vigneault said. “And it’s going to be a real tough game for us.”
When the puck dropped for Nash’s first game since April 7, 2012 (when he scored for the Jackets against the Islanders) in the city in which No. 61 played the first nine seasons of his career, No. 61’s current team and former team were both in playoff spots, tied with 78 points, though Columbus had played one fewer match.
Both teams were in, but only clear of a spot by one point. The Jackets, by virtue of holding the game in hand, held the third and final guaranteed Metro Division berth while the Rangers held the Eastern Conference’s second and final wild-card spot.
Before play Friday night, three points separated the six clubs realistically vying for the four open bids to the NHL’s tournament. Keep in mind that conference seeding is irrelevant under the revised playoff format. The top three teams in each division plus the two teams with the conference’s next-best records qualify, the latter two as wild card entrants.
Pittsburgh has first place in the Metro locked up, as does Boston in the Atlantic. Tampa Bay and Montreal hold second-place and third-place in the Atlantic. Assuming those four clubs can count on playoff berths — with the disclaimer that assuming can be risky business — that leaves four up for grabs for the Flyers, Jackets, Rangers, Maple Leafs, Red Wings and Caps.
And though the permutations were varied and complex with those six clubs having between 11 and 13 games remaining in the season that ends on April 13, the Rangers would lose control of their own destiny with a defeat to the Jackets.
So while it would certainly be an overstatement to identify any of these upcoming games as must-win situations, the Rangers were going to need to win a lot more of them than not, and they were going to have to be able to count on their leading men to lead men.
“I find that within groups, the guys feed off your top players,” said Vigneault, whose Vancouver teams qualified for the playoffs in six of seven seasons behind the Canucks’ bench, including the last five years. “Some people just thrive on this, and every game, every shift, every time you’re on the ice, you have the opportunity to decide the outcome of a game.
“Usually your elite players or top players, they thrive on that opportunity to make a difference,” the coach said. “I’m confident that’s what our guys are going to do, from our goaltender out.”