LOS ANGELES — This was tantamount to a Broadway understudy bringing down the house with a bravura performance in his final show before the star with the name above the title on the marquee resumed his starring role.
This was Antti Raanta, superb in turning in a 30-save shutout in the Blueshirts’ 3-0 victory over the Kings here Saturday in his eighth straight start in Henrik Lundqvist’s absence, one night before the franchise goaltender makes his return to the nets in Anaheim.
“He was unbelievable,” Rick Nash, who salted it with an empty-netter, said. “He’s calm back there. He doesn’t give many rebounds. He smothers it a lot.
“We’ve come to expect this from Antti. He’d be the No. 1 goaltender for a lot of teams. I totally believe that. We’re lucky to have him.”
The victory in which the Blueshirts were called upon to kill three third-period penalties (3:44 shorthanded, 1:22 of which was played 6-on-4 when Jonathan Quick was pulled for the extra attacker) reduced the team’s magic number for a seventh straight playoff clinch to two points with seven games remaining in the season.
Though this by no means was anywhere near a perfect performance, it represented a spirited effort in which the Rangers, who had been bogged down in a 5-6-2 malaise over the last month, were committed to playing straight line hockey with an edge.
“I’ve said it so often that you’re probably tired of hearing me say it, but we’re trying to find the right group to be hitting on all cylinders at the end of these last two weeks,” said Derek Stepan, who lifted the Rangers into a 1-0 lead with a left-porch put-back off a rear-wall ricochet of an initial Brendan Smith drive at 13:02 of the first period. “I think this was progress toward that.”
The Rangers had been wanting in their one-on-ones and compete level through this last stretch. But not in this one, even while their game was peppered with mistakes in puck management. The Stepan goal was a direct result not only of Mats Zuccarello winning a board battle with Anze Kopitar but No. 36 having raced to the right corner to negate an icing infraction.
“We knew we had to play that kind of north-south effort game,” Nash said. “We were trying to get the puck in deep and get in on the forecheck, even if we weren’t successful as often as we would have liked, but we had the right mentality.
“It wasn’t our best, but it was an important win for us.”
Raanta, who most certainly is vulnerable to being snatched in the expansion draft by Las Vegas, recorded his third shutout of the season after a handful of superior stops that featured three on breakaways following Rangers blunders. The 27-year-old Finn denied Tyler Toffoli in alone at 7:35 of the second after a J.T. Miller mistake, Nic Dowd on a semi-break with 9:25 to go in the period after Nick Holden bobbled the puck and then managed to get his left pad down to deny Drew Doughty in from the high slot off a Mika Zibanejad turnover with 6:15 to go in the third.
“The last few games I’ve been all over the place so I tried to fix that,” said Raanta, who was staked to a 2-0 lead when Ryan McDonagh drove one through traffic that was perhaps tipped by Zibanejad on the power play at 13:02 of the second. “I was more inside my crease so a lot of pucks came to me.
“I just tried to focus on my game and have a good start. It worked out pretty good.”
It worked out pretty well for the Rangers, who received a robust performance from Dan Girardi in 20:03 of work in his return from a 12-game absence. The forecheck game was buoyed by coach Alain Vigneault’s decision to reunite the Michael Graber-Kevin Hayes-Miller unit after a four-game trial separation.
The power play is 8-for-23 over the last eight games with this 1-for-2 and the penalty kill ended a stretch in which it had surrendered 10 goals in 27 disadvantages over the previous eight, at least one per game.
“You know when Kreids took that last penalty, I thanked him for giving us the chance to get some work in on the PK,” Stepan said jokingly, referring to Chris Kreider’s hooking penalty at 15:35 of the third. “But really, we did buckle down and we got it done.”
So now it is on to Anaheim for a shot to clinch against the Pacific-leading Ducks. Onto Anaheim with Raanta in the role of understudy.
“This was a little bit better than the last couple,” Raanta said. “It was nice to make the big saves to help us get the two points.”