NASHVILLE, Tenn. — On the road, clinging to a one-goal lead. What could go wrong?
“I think everyone on the bench knew what the storyline would have been if we let them get one,” Marc Staal told The Post. “That’s on your mind.”
But Staal was able to crack a sheepish smile while saying that because his Rangers actually held on, taking a 4-3 victory over the struggling Predators on Saturday night.
The release of tension after this game was palpable, with the Blueshirts having blown leads in five of their previous nine games. It was made even more complicated considering the Rangers (16-15-7) had only won four games on the road all year, all of those coming in shootouts.
Yet somehow they were able to make this one game different than the rest, with goals from Jesper Fast and Staal just over three minutes apart early in the third period to turn a 3-2 deficit into a 4-3 lead that they would aggressively and successfully defend.
“This felt like a more conscious effort by everyone that was on the ice to make hard plays, to make the right plays. To just not let them score,” Staal said. “It sounds simple. But it’s just more of a conscious effort by everybody; more intensity, more attention.”
The Predators (22-15-2) have now lost six in a row, and were playing this game without stalwarts Filip Forsberg, Kyle Turris and Yannick Weber. Like the Rangers cared. They just needed a win in the worst way, having gone 3-6-5 in their previous 14 games and watched as any distant hope of the postseason drifted farther and farther away.
“We have a crucial time coming up here,” said Mika Zibanejad, who survived a malicious blindside hit from Zac Rinaldo late in the second period en route to picking up a career-high four assists. “If we really want to give ourselves a chance to really do something and get us in the playoffs, we need to buckle down here.”
Before the game, the team came together for a meeting called by the leaders where they drove home a couple facts about what it takes to win.
“We certainly talked about playing winning hockey and understanding situational hockey, and I thought we did heck of a job of it tonight,” said coach David Quinn, who didn’t even need to have his regular pregame team meeting after what the leaders had said. “I give our leadership group a lot of credit. They took the bulls by the horns and played winning hockey when it mattered.”
Maybe even more rare than holding on to the late lead was that the Rangers played with an edge that has been lacking for the better part of a month. Cody McLeod, back in the lineup for the first time since he broke his hand in a fight on the night before Thanksgiving, leveled former teammate P.K. Subban on his first shift, setting the tone for the rest of the evening. Fast, also returning after missing the previous three-weeks with a lower-body injury, helped raise the level of competitiveness that was contagious, also getting rewarded with two goals while his reunited top line with Zibanejad and Chris Kreider combined for 10 points.
“You put Fast and Cody in our lineup, and it just gives us a whole different look,” Quinn said. “We were more competitive. We were more passionate.”
Kreider got his team-leading 20th goal of the season on a deft deflection that beat Pekka Rinne on a first-period power play, while Fast scored 3:51 into the second period to make it 2-1. But Nashville was staked to its 3-2 lead with two power-play goals from Nick Bonino and one when a Kevin Fiala wrist shot beat Henrik Lundqvist off the rush.
But the Rangers pushed to open the third, and never let up.
“Winning in this league is not about playing great all the time,” Lundqvist said. “It’s playing smart and finding a way.”
For one night, at least, they did just that.