It wasn’t just one player, one voice.
It came from all corners of the Rangers locker room in the Garden.
The Rangers had done it again — played a lousy first period — and this time, they were in grave danger of having to play a Game 7 on the opponent’s home ice.
Like a tsunami that builds and builds before it roars to shore, player by player, the Rangers sounded off. It was like that scene in the movie “Network” when Howard Beale yells, “I am as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”
The Rangers spoke up. Then they stood up to the tune of a series-clinching 3-1 win. Now they await the winner of the Bruins-Senators series.
“We came together in the first intermission, and we said, ‘Hey, we’re losing every battle right now,’ ” Mats Zuccarello, the game’s first star, said. “That’s not acceptable at home here. So we came together as a team. We played a solid win after that.”
The Rangers wouldn’t disclose exactly what was said, but it worked. After being outshot 11-6 and outscored 1-0 in the first period, the Rangers outshot the Canadiens 12-9 in the second and Zuccarello personally outscored the Habs 2-0.
“We’ve got some veterans guys that played a lot of playoff games,” defenseman Brendan Smith said. “And they came into the room and we talked it over and we figured out what we needed to do.
“And we challenged ourselves to a man and said, ‘Let’s go out there and do our best. And control what we can control.’ And we did that.”
They did that and the Rangers are moving on, while the Canadiens are going home.
This has been the tale of this series. The Rangers weren’t particularly good in the first period, but they outscored the Habs 6-1 in the second period in the six games.
When asked what the tone in the room was, Smith said: “Desire’s kind of a cool word. We looked at ourselves in the mirror and said, ‘Let’s go out and play a better game.’ We didn’t have our best. You guys could see that. Everyone could see it. They wanted it more than us. As a team, we collectively came together and talked it through.”
That sums up the Rangers. There is no one superstar, but there is a group with a lot of voices.