Well, that was different.
The Rangers morphed into their best version for at least one game, absolutely thumping the Flyers, 5-1, Tuesday night at the Garden. For a team that had been struggling to defend and struggling to score — really, struggling all over the place for the past month — it felt like a breath of fresh air in a room that was stale and turning sour.
“I can’t remember the last time we were sitting here talking about playing a complete game,” said Rick Nash, who broke a personal 12-game goal drought with two tallies, his first since Dec. 15.
Going back to Dec. 5, the Rangers (23-17-5) had been giving up an absurd 37.3 shots-against per game, and they were scoring just 2.38 goals per during that stretch. It had eventually led to a record of 1-4-0 in their previous five coming in, and 3-5-2 over the previous 10.
Yet they held the Flyers (20-16-8) to just 26 shots, 25 of them turned away by Henrik Lundqvist to end Philadelphia’s four-game winning streak. It was Lundqvist career win No. 425, and No. 20 on the season, as he became the first goalie in NHL history to win 20 or more games in each of his first 13 seasons. It also brought the Blueshirts back into the playoff picture, settling into the first wild-card spot by having a game in hand on the Penguins.
“It was obviously a huge difference to play in goal,” said Lundqvist, whose Vezina-caliber season was the sole reason the Rangers have remained in the postseason mix. “It’s funny how it works. We play our best defensive game in a very long time and we score five goals. I don’t remember the last time we scored five goals.”
That would be Dec. 9, also the most recent time the Rangers gave up less than 30 shots, as back then they were still the red-hot team streaking after their awful getaway. That history is what they are harping on now, the ability to stick together to get themselves out of a rut, with this dip hardly erased with one good performance.
But it seemed that the frustration had finally boiled over into execution, as Paul Carey scored their first shorthanded goal of the season, J.T. Miller scored just their fourth power-play goal in 12 games — and with even-strengths goals from Nash and Michael Grabner, it was the first time they scored in all three scenarios since March 30, 2014.
“I think when you walked in the locker room today, you could tell everyone had a little chip on their shoulder,” defenseman Brady Skjei said. “We had something to prove.”
When that sentiment was relayed to Lundqvist, he added, “I’ve been feeling it for a few games, but it just didn’t play out. But every time you lose, you should feel it. If you lose two, you should feel it even more. If you lose badly, you have to come back here and just be so desperate to win the next game.”
“I think we need to get a little bit better in that department.”
The Rangers came out of their bye week with back-to-back bad losses, dropping games to the Islanders and Penguins by a combined score of 12-4. They were turning the puck over with awful regularity, and failing to defend in the prime scoring areas.
And when Lundqvist allowed a goal to Jordan Weal just 2:06 into the first period on the first shot of the game, it was a small woe-is-me moment that could have very easily snowballed.
“I cannot believe that puck went in,” he said about Weal’s deflection of a Radko Gudas shot that was going 5 feet wide, the fifth time this season Lundqvist has allowed a goal on the first shot of the game. “For a couple seconds, you feel really sorry for yourself, but then you understand there are 58 minutes to go and you just have to dig deep. That’s what we did.”