There is no more consolation for playing well.
The Rangers can talk all they want about what they did right up in Ottawa for the first two games of this second-round playoff series, but the fact is they’re in a 2-0 hole to the Senators in the best of seven. Now the situation is that Game 3 Tuesday night at the Garden represents a chance for the Blueshirts to turn this series around or get ready to start the summer.
“We need to get a little bit better,” coach Alain Vigneault said after Monday’s practice in Westchester. “Those are the things that we’re going to talk about with our group today. And we need to win tomorrow.”
This is not a do-or-die situation for the Rangers — yet. But winning four of the next five possible games against the Senators is going to prove to be a monumental task with very little margin for error. If there has only been the smallest bit of difference between the teams in the first two games, then the Rangers need to find any way to be on the other side of it.
“So far, they’ve made one more offensive play, one more defensive play in each game. That’s why they’re up 2-0,” Vigneault said. “We need to be the team that makes that one extra defensive play and that one extra offensive play that pays off.”
Kind of like the play Kyle Turris made when he denied Rick Nash on a wraparound in the first overtime in Game 2, a play Nash finishes into a gaping net far more often than he doesn’t. It’s a play that could have changed the tenor of the series, but instead Nash had spent parts of the next two days replaying it in his head.
“Only 1,000 times. Not too much,” Nash said. “It happened so fast. I have to go backhand to forehand, right when I moved it from backhand to forehand, his stick is just there. Maybe over 1,000 times in my head.”
If the Rangers do have a chance to come back — which this core group of players has done in the past against teams far more formidable than Guy Boucher’s trapping Senators — then they need the best out of their best players. That puts the spotlight back on Nash, who was all over the puck in the six-game, first-round victory over the Canadiens but whose line with Jimmy Vesey and Derek Stepan has seemingly been neutralized by matching up against Ottawa’s all-world defenseman Erik Karlsson.
“I’m trying to play on the inside,” Nash said. “I feel like I’m getting to the net, the battles are there. I’ve had some good net-front battles. As a line, I think we just have to be around the puck more.”
Like so many other players, Nash is likely playing through a minor injury, one that kept him out of a full-team practice just before this series started. But he said that physically “everything has been good. It’s playoffs, you know? You play.”
Because the Senators clog the neutral zone, they often force the Rangers to dump it in and then try to recover it on the forecheck. Still, the Blueshirts have generated a lot of offensive chances, but still haven’t been able to get the results.
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“I think we’ve played some good hockey,” Nash said, “but we haven’t closed the job.”
That also means goalie Henrik Lundqvist needs to be better than he was in Game 2, when he allowed six goals on 34 shots. That also means they’re going to need more from J.T. Miller and Chris Kreider. That also means Vigneault is going to have to decide if he trusts rookie defenseman Brady Skjei and partner Brendan Smith in late-game situations more than shaky veterans Nick Holden and Marc Staal.
There are a lot of things the Rangers can do marginally better, but the only thing that matters now is doing what is necessary to get the result.
“We’re looking forward to the opportunity here,” Vigneault said. “We know what we need to do, and we’re going to go out there and work real hard and get it done.”