Colin Stephenson: Why the Rangers' fast start might be built to last
Rangers players celebrate a goal by center J.T. Miller against the Utah Mammoth in the third period of an NHL game at Madison Square Garden on Sunday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
Rangers coach Mike Sullivan was asked a few times last week if he thought all these games so close together so early in the season — the Blueshirts have five games in the first eight nights — actually might turn out to be a good thing for a team trying to develop chemistry.
“I’ll tell you after the fifth game,’’ he said. “Maybe when we come out of this and if we play well, we build on it, we get some momentum, the answer is yeah, it helped us. Right?’’
Could be. Sunday night’s 4-2 win over former Ranger Vincent Trocheck and the Utah Mammoth at the Garden was the Rangers’ third straight, improving them to 3-1.
They seem to be clicking on all cylinders, pushing all of the right buttons and doing all of the things necessary to win games. They are getting pucks behind other teams’ defenses. They aren’t giving up odd-man rushes. They are blocking shots (22 on Sunday) and they lead the league with six points in the early going.
And nobody wants to stop all that now.
“We’ve got to keep building,’’ said defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov, who opened the scoring late in the first period with his first goal of the season, then assisted on J.T. Miller’s eventual game-winner midway through the third. “The seasons are long, obviously, but you know how our league works; you can lose the [battle] within the first few months, so we’ve got to be on our toes and just get ready for the next one.’’
Yes, there are 80 games left in the regular season, and it’s very possible that a couple of months from now — or maybe even a couple of weeks from now — no one will care that the Rangers won three of four to start the season. But Newton’s first law of motion states that a body in motion stays in motion. And right now, the Rangers are a body in motion.
“We’ve bought into a brand of hockey that it takes to win,’’ said defenseman Sean Durzi, who was one of the pieces acquired by the Rangers in the Trocheck trade with Utah. “I think you see it. Guys are blocking shots. Guys are laying hits. I probably didn’t have my best night tonight, and I still found ways to make it hard on their top guys myself. Whether it’s finishing a check, boxing out or finding my ‘B’ game.”
Sunday marked the second straight game in which the Rangers fought off fatigue to protect a lead. This time they faced fast-skating Utah (which entered 2-0-0) playing on the second night of a back-to-back.
After Gavrikov opened the scoring, the Mammoth tied it in the second period on a power-play goal by Nick Schmaltz. However, third-period goals by Gabe Perreault and Miller put the Rangers ahead 3-1 before Andrew Peeke brought the Mammoth back within one. Eeli Tolvanen sealed it with an empty-netter for the second straight game.
Goalie Igor Shesterkin, who had scored the first goal of his professional career (and the first goal by a goalie in franchise history) in his last game, was serenaded with chants of “Shoooot!’’ every time the puck came near him — even if the net wasn’t empty.
On Tolvanen’s goal, Shesterkin corralled the puck by the goal line, and as the fans yelled for him to shoot, he passed it up the boards to Will Cuylle, who skated to the red line and shot it. It was deflected by a Utah player and went to Tolvanen, who scored. Shesterkin got an assist.
The next time the puck came his way, Shesterkin did shoot, but a Mammoth defenseman was able to deflect the puck away from the goal.
“I thought he was going to score again,’’ Sullivan said with a smile. “I think they must have pre-scouted it, because their defenseman retreated.’’
Sullivan spoke with pride about how his team is making sacrifices and doing all of the little things necessary to win.
“I just like how we’re coming together as a group,’’ he said. “It’s a good feeling we have. We’ve won a couple of games. These guys are playing hard. They’re paying the price to win, whether it be blocking shots or winning puck battles, things of that nature. But I’m really excited and couldn’t be more proud of the guys just for the team game that we’re building.’’
The Rangers did lose fourth-line center Joe Veleno to a lower-body injury early in the first period. If Veleno is forced to miss games, it will be a challenge to find a way to keep their groove going without an important penalty-killer and faceoff man who is averaging just under 15 minutes a game.
If they can’t, all these good feelings they’re having right now can turn around quickly.
Colin Stephenson covers the Rangers for Newsday. He has spent more than two decades covering the NHL and just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
