ST. LOUIS — There already have been enough losses this season that the Rangers thought they didn’t deserve, so maybe they don’t feel so bad taking a win they thought wasn’t fully deserved either. And it certainly makes the turning of the calendar quite a bit sweeter.
The Blueshirts were able to hold on by the skin of Henrik Lundqvist’s teeth, taking a 2-1 win over the Blues on Monday night which allowed them to fly back to New York and celebrate the New Year in the air with at least the satisfaction of sweeping a two-game trip.
“The feeling is not great right now. We didn’t deserve to win that game,” Chris Kreider said. “Great that we did. You have to find ways to win those games. That was a greasy road win. But definitely not good enough.”
This was in stark contrast to the Rangers (17-14-7) victory in Nashville on Saturday, when they were physical, determined, and detail-oriented en route to a 4-3 win over the Predators. But after a little backhand from Boo Nieves beat goalie Jake Allen at 3:11 of the second period to give the Rangers a 2-1 lead, the Blues (15-18-4) took over. They just could never beat Lundqvist.
“I thought we played really well for 25 minutes, and when we went up 2-1, we acted like it was 9-1,” coach David Quinn said. “If we want to be the team we’re capable of being, we have to put consistent efforts together and build off what we did against Nashville and not have this big drop over the last 35 minutes of the game in a situation like this.
“We got the two points, but we’re certainly not thrilled with the way we played.”
So if the team as a whole struggled to keep doing the right things — as Quinn said, “the cheating, and the poking-and-going, and the not hitting people” — then Lundqvist was there to clean up the mess. The 36-year-old netminder was rightfully exhausted after his 38 saves, which might not have been a boatload of clean chances, but was predicated on scrambling and battling and making saves that were attractive only in the eye of his teammates.
“We had some [good] bounces,” said Lundqvist, whose best stop might have come on Jaden Schwartz on a scramble in front with 1:21 remaining and St. Louis with the extra attacker on. “If they pick the corner there, it’s a tie game. I’m not going to lie, I think we deserved it after so many games with some tough bounces. Today, we got a little luck at times. But I think it’s about time we got some luck.”
One thing the Rangers also got was an earful from Quinn during the second period and before the third, when he made it very clear to his team that their effort was not acceptable. So his players came out in the third and tried to put everyone to sleep by chipping the puck out and playing ultraconservative, generating just four shots on Allen over the final 35:25 of game time.
“I think we did a really good job boring them to death,” Mika Zibanejad said.
During that span, Lundqvist saw 32 shots — and stopped them all.
“At the end of the day, you’ve got to find a way to get two points,” Quinn said. “There are a whole bunch of different ways to do it, and we did it because we have a great goalie.”
Despite playing better in the opening part of the game, the Rangers still were pretty soft and allowed Ryan O’Reilly to open the scoring at 10:08 of the first. But they came back when Kreider set up Mats Zuccarello for a power-play goal with 19.6 seconds remaining in the first, eventually allowing Nieves’ goal to give them the lead.
And as sloppy as it was from there, Lundqvist was great and it’s a win that ends this tumultuous calendar year.
“In an 82-game season, you’re going to have nights like this,” Quinn said. “You get two points and you get on the plane and head home and don’t complain about it.”