Rangers staring at elimination once again: ‘Desperate hockey’

RALEIGH, N.C. — The Rangers have not made it easy on themselves all season.

Why start now?

After a Game 5 performance in which the Hurricanes completely stymied the Rangers, beating them 3-1 on a night when the Blueshirts generated just 17 shots on goal and looked lost in the neutral zone, it’s time to break out the stats about this team’s ability to generate a comeback yet again.

In case you’ve forgotten: 27 comeback victories in the regular season, a franchise record. And a 3-1 deficit in the first round that the Rangers responded to with three straight comeback victories to beat the Penguins. In that sense, at least, winning two straight against the Hurricanes could be seen as an easier lift.

This time, Game 7 — if it gets that far — will be on the road. But the Rangers are not looking that far ahead just yet, and they are still a group content to have their backs against the wall.

“I think pretty high,” Ryan Strome said of the group’s confidence level. “The way I look at it, we’ve played a lot of must-win games lately and we’ve done a pretty good job. Tonight we slipped up a little bit, but we’ve played some desperate hockey.”

Desperate hockey was what got the Rangers through against the Penguins, and it was what they lacked Thursday night at PNC Arena. At Madison Square Garden on Saturday, in yet another must-win situation, they’ll be falling back on that first-round experience again.

“We talked about experience with this group going into the playoffs but when I look around the room and the feel in that dressing room is super confident at all times, I think the first series helped a little bit and then having to win Games 3 and 4, those are pretty must-win games and we did a good job,” Strome said. “So we can draw from those experiences. Our crowd’s gonna be great.”

Following the team’s Game 4 win, Rangers coach Gerard Gallant said he did not expect the momentum to carry over into the next contest. To his team’s detriment, that was proven correct Thursday. But the axiom could now work in their favor.

“We gotta win one game,” said Chris Kreider, who failed to record a shot on goal Thursday. “So that’s our focus.”

It has become a cliché to describe this team as resilient. But there is a reason for that. The proof has been in its play. And the Rangers will need every bit of that resiliency to get through Carolina now.

“We gotta get back at it and win that game,” Strome said. “I’m really confident in the group and the belief is super high.”