Now comes the balancing act, and it starts in goal.
The Rangers have seemingly once again found equilibrium, which means that once again, preparedness for the postseason is paramount for Alain Vigneault and his coaching staff.
So after starting netminder Henrik Lundqvist rediscovered his game while playing all of the four-game homestand they recently swept, and as backup Antti Raanta completed his first 60-minute contest since Dec. 29 with the 3-2 victory over the Blue Jackets in Columbus on Monday night to extend the team’s winning streak to six games, where does Vigneault go from here?
Because with Tuesday’s day off and the next game being the big-time contest against the Islanders in Brooklyn on Thursday — about time, right? — it’s now easy to remember Vigneault saying at the beginning of the year he wanted to start Lundqvist less than 60 games in the regular season. With Lundqvist’s 34th birthday coming March 2, he is on pace to play 68.
Raanta, 27, dealt with a lower-body injury suffered in the first period of a game in Montreal on Jan. 14, which was his only start in the new calendar year before Monday night. He made 30 saves against Columbus, and scrambled to preserve the win in the final gasping moments of the third period. It helped the Rangers get to 9-2-0 in their previous 11 games, as well as 13-5-0 since a bizarre 7-4 loss to the Wild back on Dec. 23, just before the Christmas break.
“Really, really good feeling,” Raanta said after the game. “When Hanky is playing at that level, it’s tough to get games there. It was really fun to just get there and play. It had been a long time when I played last time. I just wanted to get that good feeling going again.”
The victory put the Rangers in a virtual tie for second place in the Metropolitan Division with the Blue Jackets and Penguins before Pittsburgh played host to the Canucks on Tuesday night. Columbus is scuffling since its 16-game winning streak ended Jan. 5, with John Tortorella’s club 8-10-1 since then.
If things stay on this trajectory — and who knows what might happen with the March 1 trade deadline still looming large — than the Rangers will be rewarded by entering the side of the playoff bracket with the Penguins and Capitals, a much more difficult route than what would come on the Atlantic Division side.
So, again, with 26 games remaining in the season and a 14-point cushion from falling out of the playoff picture, how is Vigneault going to deploy his goalies?
If one thing is clear it’s that this has been an unusual season for Lundqvist. He sat as a healthy backup for a career-high four straight games in early December, and then struggled to find any consistency as the schedule went through a handful of stops and starts, with the holiday break, the new “bye week” Jan. 8-12, and then the All-Star break over the final weekend of January.
That’s why the four-game set at the Garden against all Western Conference teams proved to be so important, not just for the Rangers to take four in a row, but for Lundqvist to play well in all of them and reestablish a good feeling for himself.
And Raanta, now in his second year on Broadway, has been a valuable resource, able to win games at a clip well above the average understudy. The Blueshirts have a hellish travel schedule in March, and it would do Vigneault loads of good to know that he can — and should — start Raanta in any situation while preserving Lundqvist for when the games matter most.
Which is not to say that it’s even possible for Vigneault to think about dropping back into that first wild-card spot. At this point, his main focus is on “getting the checkmark,” his pet phrase for saying they’ve secured a playoff spot, soon to find its way into every answer he gives over the next two months.
But that does not mean he will disregard the value of rest, and that starts with his most important player, who happens to be in goal.
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