Staple: Rangers unpredictable as ever

The Rangers hit the Olympic break on a two-game winning streak, which is about as good as it's gotten for them since early January.

They're tied for ninth place in the East with the Lightning, whom the Rangers beat, 5-2, Sunday at the Garden, and are a point out of eighth.

Consistency has been the most elusive element of these first 62 games, and not just from game to game. It's been period to period at times.

Playing without Marian Gaborik and Michael Del Zotto, playing the last game before the two-week hiatus and attempting to get into the playoffs for a fifth straight season, the Rangers still came out listless and fell behind 2-0 after a period.

And the Garden crowd booed its team off the ice.

"And rightfully so," coach John Tortorella said. "Our starts, that's something we have to cure, especially in our building. You get into a tough spot."

The Rangers are very much in a tough spot with 20 games left.

Tortorella, Chris Drury and Ryan Callahan are headed to Vancouver to represent the U.S.; Henrik Lundqvist (Sweden), Gaborik (Slovakia) and Olli Jokinen (Finland) are headed there, too. They're all playing for all-star squads that don't have the worries that the Rangers have.

Tortorella is fond of saying he's trying to get this team to "play the right way." That has any number of meanings: playing smart, sticking up for one another, not turning away from checks and giving full effort are some of the characteristics Tortorella has searched for.

He's gotten them some nights, such as in Pittsburgh on Friday. Gaborik tried to play with his lacerated thigh but couldn't after just half a period; Del Zotto, gashed by Evgeni Malkin's skate barely five minutes in, left early, too. But the group that remained played smart, relied on Lundqvist and stood up for one another, withstanding the loss of Michal Rozsival for 10 minutes after he intervened to pull Matt Cooke off Drury in an unlikely fight.

They wanted to feed off that road win over an elite team and do it at home, where they are just 14-15-4; the 15 home losses are third-most in the NHL. This time it was against a Tampa Bay team playing its third game in four days, a team that, like the Rangers, is right in the mix for the final few playoff spots in the East.

But still, two deflected goals allowed in a span of 90 seconds and only seven Rangers shots on goal left everyone wondering why this group cannot sustain its positives from game to game.

"It just wasn't there in the first," said Vinny Prospal, who had a goal and assist in the four-goal second. "The way we played in Pittsburgh, it wasn't there today. Then the next two periods are totally different. We've been battling that all year and it's hard to say why it is."

Tortorella doesn't know either. Perhaps it's that he's relying on a thin roster - Erik Christensen was yesterday's star, and he's a first-line center who came off the waiver wire - or perhaps he's gotten in his players' faces too many times.

"We need to be apart for a little bit," Tortorella said. "I think it comes back with a fresher attitude. I'm sick of looking at them and I'm sure they're sick of looking at me. And that's healthy."

Consistency is the only way for this group, as currently assembled, to succeed. Lundqvist, the Olympic hero in 2006, hasn't yet found that highest echelon of play; maybe he'll discover it in Vancouver and bring it back for the stretch run.

His teammates have a couple of weeks to ponder the ups and downs of a season that has only one constant: You never know what you'll get from these Rangers.