It was from an unlikely source, but backup goalie Ondrej Pavelec was the reason the Rangers were allowed to do something very important coming off their three-day Christmas break.
“It took a couple periods to sweat out the alcohol and turkey,” defenseman Marc Staal explained after his team’s 1-0 shootout victory over the Capitals on Wednesday night at the Garden. “So we started to feel better after that.”
Despite one of their better defensive performances in weeks, and a third period that coach Alain Vigneault said “could have been one of our best periods this year,” the game was still knotted in a scoreless tie through 65 minutes. So into the skills competition it went, when Pavelec’s brilliant counterpart, fellow backup Phillip Grubauer, finally cracked.
Both Mats Zuccarello and Mika Zibanejad beat him, while Pavelec shut the door on T.J. Oshie and then thanked the heavens when Alex Ovechkin’s backhand hit the side of the net, sealing a hard-fought victory that belatedly brought joyful tidings to the Blueshirts.
“After the break, it wasn’t easy for anybody,” said Pavelec, who stopped all 30 shots he faced for his first shutout as a Ranger in his sixth start this season, the first since Dec. 11. “It felt good to come up with the two points, that’s for sure.”
The Rangers (20-13-4) were coming off two rather uninspiring losses going into the break, and it was a bit of a surprise that Pavelec got the net instead of franchise backbone Henrik Lundqvist, who had started 31 of the team’s first 36 games. But as Lundqvist prepared himself for Friday’s game in Detroit, followed by the outdoor Winter Classic at Citi Field on New Year’s Day, it was Pavelec who did more than hold down the fort against a Capitals (22-13-3) team that remains above the Rangers in the tightly cropped Metropolitan Division standings.
“Surprisingly, I felt really good,” Pavelec said. “But I’m happy for the two points, because to lose this one, it would have been really tough for me.”
If anyone on the ice outplayed Pavelec, it was Grubauer — or, if on the Rangers, then maybe anyone on the newly formed Rick Nash-Mika Zibanejad-Mats Zuccarello line, which combined for 14 of the Rangers’ 37 shots on net. They helped pepper the Washington netminder with terrific scoring chances over the final 20 minutes of regulation, but he stopped all 18 shots and got his team a loser’s point for its troubles.
Grubauer had a jaw-dropping sequence of stops early in the third — two bang-bang chances from J.T. Miller and Kevin Hayes, then two on Zuccarello, then a face-mask save on Brendan Smith, then somehow staying on top of a jam shot from Nash on a power play. Pavelec took notice, as most goalies do, knowing that it was only going to be one small mistake that would make the difference.
“I thought that the first goal was going to be huge,” Pavelec said. “But we found a way to win, and I think we deserved to win.”
The Blueshirts recently had become a team that routinely gives up 40-plus shots a night, doing it in two of the three previous games, as well as eight of the past 18. Lundqvist had carried them for quite some time, but they finally stopped turning the puck over with such regularity and started forechecking with more consistency.
“I’m hoping that we are going to continue to play that way,” Vigneault said. “A big part of tonight, if you want to talk about our defensive game, was more playing with the puck — playing with the puck quick, making the right decisions — and you can create some great looks offensively like I thought we did.”
Along with Pavelec, it was a performance that got this section of the Rangers schedule off on the right foot — and one more step away from the holiday hangover.