CHICAGO — Eddie Giacomin and … Cam Talbot?
That’s the company the Rangers backup goalie joined with Sunday night’s thrilling 1-0 overtime victory over the Blackhawks at United Center, becoming the first Blueshirts netminder since the legendary Giacomin to blank Chicago, going back to Jan. 25, 1969.
Asked if this is were good as he has felt during the 16-game stretch since Henrik Lundqvist went down with his sprained blood vessel, Talbot didn’t hesitate.
“Definitely,” said Talbot, now with five shutouts on the season and a record of 10-2-3 in the games he has started in Lundqvist’s absence. “This is as good as I’ve felt in a long time, I think. I’m seeing the puck really well and the guys are playing great in front of me. Just seem a lot more confident coming down the stretch here, so it’s a lot of fun.”
What’s fun is getting playoff-type action, which the Rangers (40-17-7) are now getting accustomed to.
Following a 2-1 overtime loss in Detroit on Wednesday, this game was a back-and-forth affair, with some tight defense but no lack of scoring opportunities.
It turned just 32 seconds into the overtime, when Derick Brassard made a good defensive play in the neutral zone, and turning back up the ice, took a pass from Mats Zuccarello and rifled a slap shot from the left dot to beating Corey Crawford near side for the win.
“Sometimes it’s going to take a little while for the team to get going,” Brassard said. “Our goalie was great. Playing against a great offensive team like that, and they didn’t score a goal, it means a lot.”
The Blackhawks (39-21-6) are not quite as dynamic without superlative winger Patrick Kane, who will miss the rest of the season with a broken clavicle. But they still generated plenty of chances, with all 29 shots thwarted by Talbot — including a great glove save on a Patrick Sharp rebound attempt early in the third.
“Cam has played some real good games, and tonight he had a few huge saves to make at real important times — and he did,” coach Alain Vigneault said. “I think he’s feeling real good about his game, and our guys are feeling real good playing in front of him.”
The hope for the Blueshirts would be they continue to play this way when Lundqvist does return, likely sometime before the end of the month. They have gone 11-2-3 in the 16 games he has missed — rookie Mackenzie Skapski got a win in his only start, in Buffalo on Feb. 20 — and whether it be with outbursts of offense or defensive stoutness, they have found ways to win.
“We knew we were a good hockey team,” said alternate captain Marc Staal, again a force on the blue line. “Obviously, when your starting goalie goes down, it’s a test. You want to play well, you want to win games. So through this stretch without him, we’ve done that, found ways to win hockey games. That’s big this time of year.”
There were some lulls through the second period, when the Blackhawks outshot the Rangers 12-5 and got two of their four fruitless power plays. But the Rangers came back in the third, and were only held from a regulation win by the play of Crawford, Talbot’s opposing netminder.
“Got some great saves from both goaltenders,” Vigneault said. “We made one more offensive play than they did.”
Crawford made three of the most impressive of his 35 saves late in third, a sequence of about 30 seconds when he denied Chris Kreider, Kevin Klein and Martin St. Louis in succession.
But he couldn’t stop Brassard, and that put the Rangers just one point behind the Islanders for tops in the Metropolitan Division before the two rivals’ final regular-season showdown at the Coliseum on Tuesday.
“We’re facing a lot of really good teams the next couple days,” Brassard said, “and I think it’s a really good start for our team.”