TOUGH IT OUT
Rangers know it's time to up their level of urgency and intensity
What has happened is that the league has changed, and the Rangers haven’t. Not yet, at least.
As the number of games remaining in the regular season dwindle to less than 20, the Blueshirts are finding their style of play, predicated on speed and transition, is being stymied by the lack of open ice. Teams are tightening up defensively, battling harder for pucks along the walls and in one-on-one battles, and playing simpler, smarter games.
The Rangers saw it in Saturday night’s 4-1 loss to the Canadiens at the Garden, just as they did while losing three of their past four and during this nine-game stretch (4-4-1) that goes back to the 4-2 loss to the Islanders on Feb. 16. And the change in play has made it feel like the floor is falling out from beneath the Rangers, like all of that hard work that got them solidly in the first wildcard position is being brought into question.
But what remains, starting with the first of this four-game trip Monday night versus Tampa Bay, is a chance for them to start figuring out how to adapt. It’s time for the Rangers to start playing playoff hockey, like most of the league already has.
“I wouldn’t sit here and tell you that we have to completely change our face and be a gritty team,” alternate captain Derek Stepan said after Sunday’s practice. “But there certainly is a playoff-atmosphere game. Whether you’re a gritty team, or maybe a speed team — whatever your team is, you still have to adjust to the playoff style.
“I don’t expect guys to go out and run guys through the walls and stuff like that. There is a way of playing hard without doing that. We have to play a physical game, but you don’t have to run guys through walls and have big hits and fight ev- ery single night. I would just call it a playoff-type mindset.”
Coach Alain Vigneault called into question the “will” of his team after the loss to Atlantic Division-leading Montreal, which also served a reminder that any crossover into the other side of the Eastern Conference postseason bracket is hardly going to be a cakewalk.
Don’t read too much into the fact the Rangers called up veteran toughman Tanner Glass and hard-nosed defenseman Steve Kampfer from AHL Hartford on Sunday. It does give Vigneault some options, finally now having an extra healthy forward and defenseman, but it’s hardly going to remake the constitution of this team.
“I think right now, you bring in Tanner and Kampf, and it gives you a little bit more depth,” Vigneault said. “But at the end of the day, it’s about our top-nine [forwards] and our top D’s playing to their level.”
Vigneault did not exempt the team’s trade-deadline acquisition, defenseman Brendan Smith, from that appraisal, either.
“He’s one of the guys we’re looking to,” Vigneault said. “I know this is a new team, new environment. He was in Detroit a long time. Trying to get him accustomed to the way we do things here as quick as we can. But with him and the rest of our group, I believe there is better execution, a little better compete level and we need to find that. The games are hard, the games are tough, and we need to get our game back.”
Stepan also hasn’t scored since the Obama Administration, a streak of 20 games dating to Jan. 17.
“My individual game,” he said, “it’s got to get better.”
He’s certainly not alone, and Saturday was the eighth time in the past nine games the Rangers have scored two goals or fewer. But it’s determination and the intangible aspects of the game that are needed now, and that’s what the Rangers are looking for.
“I think our focus is just on the process of getting better,” Stepan said. “Avoid seeking results and just work as a group to get better each night. The results will come with us getting better as a group.”