So Sunday’s third period in which the Blueshirts dominated the Flames to seal a 4-1 victory at the Garden is the template for this team that somehow is 6-2-2 despite underwhelming just about everybody including themselves just about every night.
“For some reason we go into the third period with the mentality that every play matters, instead of kind of hoping, which is the way we’ve been starting games this year,” said Dan Girardi, whose drive from the slot beat Jonas Hiller for the 2-1 goal at 16:57 of the second. “In the third period, we come out making hard, solid plays.
“We need to play that way from the start where everyone’s working together and not just kind of waiting to see what happens,” the alternate captain said. “We’ve got to get that start and carry it through for 60 minutes.
“Our record is really good, but we haven’t played a full 60 yet.”
The Blueshirts played an incomplete 25 or 28 minutes in this one before the Flames, who have been outscored 25-11 at full and even strength in going 2-6, wilted under minimum pressure. Until the Rangers got going — relatively speaking — after half the game had been played, it was possible to have watched the match without knowing the identity of Calgary’s goaltender, given that Hiller had so little to do.
Indeed, the Blueshirts had sent only 10 shots Hiller’s way — one over the first 10:57 of the second — before Oscar Lindberg’s conversion of Kevin Hayes’ neat backhand centering feed knotted the match 1-1 at 12:03. Girardi struck just over five minutes later.
“Games can change on a goal,” said Marc Staal. “We were able to get momentum and settle down.”
Superior goaltending has been the one constant of the first two-plus weeks. Well, that plus a plethora of mind-numbing lapses in the defensive zone and unaccountable carelessness with the puck through the neutral zone and on entries. So that’s three constants.
Regardless, Antti Raanta took the baton handed to him by Henrik Lundqvist and ran with it. The netminder was outstanding in contending with traffic and net-drive through the first 30 minutes, beaten only off a dipsy-doodle odd-man situation following a Staal turnover just 3:06 into the match.
“It was a tough start, first goal, first shot,” said Raanta, who’d posted a shutout in his first game but had no chance to stop Jiri Hudler. “We weren’t there early in the game but guys started to play better and better in the second and got a couple of goals.
“We relaxed a little bit also and started to play our kind of game; what we want to play.”
Raanta’s best and most significant moments came late in the first, when he made a pad save on Mikael Backlund’s shorthanded breakaway and backed that up with an immediate stop on Michael Frolik’s attempted put-back with 2:25 remaining in the period.
“Of course you want to keep the game close when you are behind,” Raanta said. “It was great to make those saves.”
Emerson Etem got into his second game, replacing the sidelined Viktor Stalberg (believed concussion) on the unit with Dom Moore and Jarret Stoll. The fourth line was on for Calgary’s goal but thereafter had a reasonably solid night, both tough to play against an able to spend a fair amount of time below the hash marks in the offensive zone.
“It’s hard, you want to be noticed when you do get the chance to play but you still have to make the right reads and make the right plays,” said Etem, whose previous chance had come in Montreal on Oct. 15. “I think I was able to do that and I think our line read off each other pretty well.”
The Rangers still lack cohesiveness. Everything seems to be far more of a struggle than it probably should be. There’s little flow but much evident in the way of flaws. Still, this was 4-1 after third-period goals from Kevin Klein and Derick Brassard. Still, the Rangers are 6-2-2 having outscored the opposition 23-11 while 5-on-5.
“We’ve got a good group here that knows how to win—well, maybe not win it all, but knows how to win games,” said Girardi. “We know what it takes.
“We’ve just got to go out and play on instinct.”