This can be looked at two ways.
First, the Rangers beat the worst team in the league, a winless group of young players, so whoop-de-doo. Or, secondly, the struggling Rangers finally did what they were supposed to do and beat a desperate team during an emotional return to the Garden for a former teammate who was integral to the organization for almost a decade.
Well, from the coach down to the players, the Rangers all believed the latter following a 5-2 win over Derek Stepan and the Coyotes on Thursday night on Broadway.
“You look at it, both teams are fighting to get points. And you’d have to say that this is a challenging game in the sense that they might be due here to win one and we need the points,” coach Alain Vigneault said. “We got the job done and I think it was good for our confidence.”
So the Rangers (3-6-2) now trudge off to Montreal for a game against another struggling group in the Canadiens on Saturday night. They are hardly rolling, but if this season is going to turn around for these Blueshirts, it needed to happen fast — no matter who it happened against.
“We need wins,” said goalie Ondrej Pavelec, who was there when the Rangers needed him most while making 27 saves in his second start of the season in place of Henrik Lundqvist. “We didn’t have a good start this season. We wanted to get back on track, win some games, and keep going.”
By calling up center Boo Nieves from AHL Hartford on Wednesday, Vigneault was finally allowed to get back to his four-line rotation after two consecutive games with 11 forwards and seven defensemen. Nieves delivered with three assists, while his line with Michael Grabner (two goals) and Pavel Buchnevich (two goals) combined for seven points.
“There’s no doubt that line played a real strong game for us at both ends of the rink,” Vigneault said. “They have a lot of speed, and that speed led to a lot of opportunities.”
After Chris Kreider and Buchnevich opened the scoring in the first — and the Rangers managed to get out of the first five minutes without being down, a rarity through the first 10 games — the Coyotes showed some push when another old pal, Anthony “The Duke” Duclair, scored at 5:13 of the second to make it 2-1. But just 46 seconds later, Nieves muscled a one-armed pass to Grabner in front to retake a two-goal lead.
“Before the game, what [the coaches] said was to skate fast and keep it simple,” Nieves said. “I just kind of used my speed, got around, and I knew Grabner was going to be there. Just kind of gave him the puck and he did the rest.”
Buchnevich made it 4-1 on his second of the night at 13:56 of the second when Arizona’s third-string goalie Adin Hill handed the puck over. But, as Vigneault said, the Coyotes kept pushing. Clayton Keller scored a power-play goal at 3:52 of the third to make it 4-2, and then Pavelec made his best and most important save of the night when he got his left arm on a wide-open Max Domi shot from the left circle with just over seven minutes remaining.
“Timely saves are a big part of this game,” Vigneault said.
Those are the types of plays the Rangers had not been getting, and it was the reason they still have to dig themselves out of a substantial hole. But this was at least a start, and it has to be followed up before momentum going in the right direction can really be thought about.
“We wanted to get to playing the right way,” said captain Ryan McDonagh.
For one night, at least, they did.