If Thursday night’s game was a preview of their looming first-round matchup with the Devils, the Rangers are going to have to bring a whole lot more when it really matters two and a half weeks from now.
The Blueshirts lost out on an opportunity to pull even with the Devils in second place in the Metropolitan Division standings, falling 2-1 in front of a split crowd at the Prudential Center in Newark.
With the victory, New Jersey now has a four-point cushion on the Rangers and is just a single point behind the division-leading Hurricanes.
It had been a tough couple of weeks against some stiff competition for the Devils, who lost six of their previous eight games, including a 5-1 loss to the Islanders.
The Devils, however, showed up for their most important regular-season game in recent memory.
“I told the team today, this is what we wanted, we talked about it last year,” Devils head coach Lindy Ruff said before the game. “You want to be playing meaningful games, well what more meaningful game could you be playing this late in the year.”
Winning a majority of the foot races to the puck and skating aggressively on the forecheck, the Devils controlled the pace of play for the most part. Their explosiveness in transition was difficult to keep up with, which allowed them to dominate the neutral zone.
The Rangers simply had to grind for every centimeter of ice they got, while the Devils made setting up in the offensive zone look almost effortless at times.
Dougie Hamilton collected a game-high five shots on goal from everywhere on the ice. Jack Hughes was a possession machine. Vitek Vanecek was unwaveringly sturdy.
Though goalie Igor Shesterkin kept the Rangers in the game with 29 saves, the players in front of him couldn’t counterattack as much as they needed to. The Rangers were ultimately outshot 31-23.
Defenseman Niko Mikkola was one of the Rangers’ few standout skaters, which says a lot.
Chris Kreider did get the Rangers on the board with a power-play goal at 13:24 of the second period to cut the Devils’ lead 2-1. The goal tied Kreider with Vic Hadfied for the fifth-most goals in franchise history at 262.
The second and third periods weren’t nearly as lopsided as the first, but the tone was set by the Devils from the start.
Braden Schneider had to sweep the puck out of the crease within the first few minutes of the game and the Rangers were chasing from then on.
The Devils posted 19 scoring chances in comparison to the Rangers’ three in the opening 20 minutes, which resulted in a 2-0 deficit for the visitors. It very well could’ve been a much larger margin if not for Shesterkin and his 12 saves in the first.
After Erik Haula redirected a feed from Hamilton past Shesterkin just over five minutes after the puck was dropped, the Devils’ trade-deadline acquisition, Timo Meier, scored on the power play toward the end of the period.
Despite facing what’s supposed to be a high-scoring lineup, two goals was all the Devils needed to keep their hold on home ice and the No. 2 spot in the division.
The Rangers are going to need to step it up vs. the Devils, whom they likely will face in the first round of the playoffs.
