Rangers 4 – Stars 2
At the end of the season, when the top eight teams in each conference advance to the playoffs, no one is going to particularly care how the necessary points were accumulated, only that enough of them were.
And so on in the wake of last night’s 4-2 Garden victory over the Stars, the primary focus is not on all of the gaffes, blunders and breakdowns that invited Dallas to assume a 25-5 advantage in shots over the first 32 minutes, but rather on the result itself – a second consecutive “How Did They Do That?” victory that leaves the Rangers 6-5-1 and over .500 at the 12-game mark for the first time since 1995-96.
“We’re not killing penalties well, the power play isn’t going, we’re having trouble in our own end, but we’re finding ways to win,” Michael York, who scored his team’s first two goals and was clearly the best player on the ice from start to finish, said. “To be a little more specific, Ricky is finding ways for us to win. Let’s be serious.”
That’s Ricky, of course, as in Mike Richter, who followed up Saturday’s bravura 45-save performance in Boston with an equally splendid 36-save showing last night even while suffering from the flu. It is phenomenal – nothing short of that – what the goaltender is doing less than seven months following his second major knee surgery in two seasons.
“Ricky standing on both legs and being healthy has been huge for us,” said head coach Ron Low. “He has just been excellent.”
If Richter was excellent, if York was splendid, so did the Rangers get a big game from the Tomas Kloucek-Dale Purinton defense pair. Their play set the tone for the team’s most physically committed effort of the year.
Sandy McCarthy, who got the game-winner by going to the net at 15:19 of the second to convert a Mark Messier centering feed, was mean. Eric Lindros, who narrowly avoided a third-period Derian Hatcher elbow aimed at the head – intended to injure, no question about that – engaged the opponent when appropriate to do so.
“If we indeed are going to get better we have to way more physical, still,” said Low. “We can’t have people come in here and have fun.”
And then there was Theo Fleury, whose assists on each of York’s goals made him the 61st player in league history to reach the 1,000-point milestone. Rest assured – the little man with the big heart has earned every one of them, just as he’s earned everything he’s gotten from this game.
“For a guy who wasn’t supposed to play in the NHL – or that’s what people said, anyway – this means a lot,” Fleury, selected 188th overall and in the eighth round of the 1987 Entry Draft by the Flames, said. “And on top of that, the way it came about means more to me than anything else.
“I left the game for a while to deal with personal problems, I took care of what I needed to take care of, and came back ready to play. It makes it extra special.”
It’s taken Fleury, who missed the final 20 matches last year after going into rehab, a bit of time to find his game. Truth is, he hasn’t really found his hands or timing, yet. But his work ethic has been exemplary; his try and emotion on the ice are obvious. And after taking a spate of foolish penalties, he’s turned his energy into a positive force. His legs just keep on churning, and right to the net.
“Theo told me today he was almost drafted by the Oilers,” Messier said. “He said Glen [Sather] told him, and he told me.
“That would have been interesting.”
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Messier reached a scoring milestone of his own when he helped set up on McCarthy’s go-ahead goal. That assist tied him with Paul Coffey for fourth place on the NHL’s career assist list with 1,135.
Messier fought off a defender behind the net and made a sharp-angle pass to the front of the net where McCarthy dumped it in for his first goal of the season.
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The Stars raised $130,000 for the New York Firefighters 9-11 Disaster Relief Fund, most of it coming from a charity softball game between the Stars and Texas Rangers alumni.