Rangers' resiliency on display in Game 2 win over Penguins
The Rangers celebrate after defeating the Pittsburgh Penguins in Game 2 of the First Round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs at Madison Square Garden on Thursday, May 5, 2022. Credit: Jim McIsaac
For those of you who pay attention to the NHL primarily during the playoffs, let’s get you caught up on a theme of the Rangers’ 2021-22 regular season: resiliency.
Maybe it was talent, maybe it was character, maybe it was coaching and maybe it was some healthy, youthful cluelessness – or all of the above – but they consistently answered tests and avoided losing streaks.
They lost three games in a row in regulation time only once, and that was late last month, after their playoff situation was pretty much resolved.
Now here we are, when it matters most, and on Thursday night, the pattern continued.
Faced with having to bounce back from a deflating triple-overtime loss in Game 1, the Rangers did just that, beating the Penguins, 5-2, at Madison Square Garden to tie the teams’ first-round series at 1-1.
What gave coach Gerard Gallant confidence his team could get it done again?
“Well, it’s an 82-game regular season, and we’ve done it all regular season long,” he said. “We’ve got a talented hockey club, and when we want to play real good hockey and sound hockey, we’re a good team.”
The Rangers are 20-8-3 this season following a loss.
Frank Vatrano, who had a goal and an assist on Thursday, was asked what it meant to show the team can be resilient not only in the regular season, but deep into spring.
“It’s big,” he said. “Playoff hockey is a different animal, and everyone's got to step up their game . . . There are real momentum swings, no matter who you're playing against throughout the whole entire series.
“So you’ve got to learn how to weather those and when you get the momentum shifts, you make sure you're bearing down on your chances, and I think that's what we did tonight.”
The Rangers are 9-1 since 1950 when playing Game 2 of a playoff series at home after losing Game 1.
OK, so that covers a lot of history. But the recent history of this team bodes well for the coming days, with what in effect will be a best-of-five series against the aging but wily Penguins.
Mostly, it just felt good to get a victory – any victory. It was the Rangers’ first playoff win in five years and one day. They beat the Senators, 4-1, in Game 4 of a second-round series at the Garden on May 4, 2017.
And it was the first playoff victory by any New York-area NHL, MLB, NFL or NBA team in 10 ½ months – since the Islanders’ Game 6 victory over the Lightning in the NHL semifinals on June 23, 2021.
Not that everything was perfect in Game 2. Gallant said the Rangers need to play a more “complete game.”
“Like every time we seem to get some momentum going, we give it back to them, and we can't keep doing that,” he said. “We’ve got to play better and stronger hockey in our d-zone.”
Fair enough, and ageless Sidney Crosby is proving in this series that he has plenty of good hockey left in him.
So the Penguins will not be an easy out. But with Rangers goaltender Igor Shesterkin at the top of his game and the Penguins going with third-stringer Louis Domingue, the Blueshirts would appear to be in a favorable position.
Gallant was perturbed by a play with 2:04 remaining on which the Penguins’ Jeff Carter clipped Shesterkin and sent him tumbling to the ice, where he seemed to be in pain as a trainer examined him.
But he soon was back on his feet, back in his net and feeling “great” as he said later. There’s that resiliency thing again.
Entering the game, the Rangers were seeking to rediscover the physical style that they evidenced over the first 25 minutes of Game 1, when they took a 2-0 lead.
“The key is just to keep that same game plan for the full 60,” Ryan Reaves said before the game. “I think we showed that when we play our game, that it's hard to play with us.”
When asked whether it is possible to sustain the sort of start the Rangers had in Game 1, Reaves said, “It’s the playoffs. You want to win the Cup, it has to be.”
The Rangers sustained their sharpness enough in Game 2 well enough to get one step closer to a Cup. There will be ups and downs ahead. So far they have proven they can ride the waves without crashing.
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
