The Rangers are looking for a hero.
Or are they?
“In this kind of situation there’s a fine line between wanting to be the guy to get us out of this and then going out there and trying to do too much,” Henrik Lundqvist told The Post before the Blueshirts attempted to put a brake on their 1-5 pratfall out of the gate Tuesday against Pittsburgh at MSG. “It’s a very fine line.
“It’s good to have guys who want to lead and be the difference, but you have to trust the team mentality and have trust in each other. For me and everyone, you just focus on what you can control; what you can improve in your own game to help the team win.”
Lundqvist, scheduled for his sixth start overall after backing up Ondrej Pavelec in Saturday’s 3-2 defeat to New Jersey, is 1-3 with a 2.82 GAA and .914 save pct. The numbers are unduly affected by the start in Toronto on Oct. 7, in which Lundqvist was pulled after allowing five goals on 17 shots in the first period.
The King’s game has been progressively sharper since he started the season with an unsteady performance in the season-opening 4-2 empty net-abetted defeat to Colorado and then staggered through that disastrous first period the following game in Toronto. He turned in his best performance in his last time out when he surrendered two goals on 42 shots in Friday’s 3-1 defeat in Columbus.
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“Personally, other than that one period, I like where my game is at,” Lundqvist said. “But that doesn’t mean that I can’t be better. And that’s what I’m focusing on. To do my best to give the team the best chance of winning.
“The rest is out of my control.”
The Rangers, who continue this homestand with matches against the Islanders on Thursday, Nashville on Saturday afternoon, San Jose next Monday and Arizona on Oct. 26, are in danger of allowing the season to slip out of their control. It is so early in the year, and there is opportunity for recovery, but 1-5 is 1-5.
“I don’t think we’re that far off track,” said Lundqvist. “There have been so many situations in games where it feels like we were one goal away, but then, of course that one goal is the difference between winning and losing.”
The Rangers enter this one against the Penguins having scored the almost unimaginably paltry number of seven even-strength goals in six games, with two in the current three-game losing streak. The Chris Kreider-Mika Zibanejad-Pavel Buchnevich top line had scored only once five-on-five (Zibanejad against Montreal’s Carey Price in the third period of the third game) and had been blanked the last three matches.
That provided enough impetus for coach Alain Vigneault to continue to rearrange his forward units. He made an adjustment to the top line by moving Zibanejad between Rick Nash and Mats Zuccarello, matched-set wingers who’d previously worked on units centered by Filip Chytil, Kevin Hayes and J.T. Miller. Kreider, meanwhile, shifts onto a second line with David Desharnais in the middle and Miller on the right while Buchnevich is assigned a fourth-line role (in conjunction with first power-play unit time). Kevin Hayes opens between Jimmy Vesey and Jesper Fast.
“We’ve been through some rough patches before, and the experience we have getting through them should help us. It’s tough, though, having a start like this. It’s put us in a hole,” Lundqvist said. “You try to stay positive, you give energy to each other. And you prepare to do your job.
“For me, that means getting away from it on an off-day like Sunday. It’s important for me to do that. Now it’s focusing on what I need to do to be at my best in the next game. We can’t think about the bigger picture, but we do have to turn this around as quickly as we can.”