A Rangers win does not have much significance right now, if any at all. It is more for team morale now than anything else.
The Blueshirts got a little boost after capturing just their seventh victory at Madison Square Garden this season with a 3-2 shootout win over the Penguins.
Vincent Trocheck scored in the skills competition to snap a five-game losing streak.
Rallying from an early two-goal deficit, the Rangers showed some long-awaited pride on home ice.
“I have a sense that it’s been really hard,” head coach Mike Sullivan said of his team after practice on Friday. “It’s been hard on all of us, but for those guys that have built up a history here, I can only imagine how it feels for them. None of us are where we want to be right now, but we are where we are. We’re trying to do the best and make the best decisions moving forward. Do I have a sense of how hard it’s been? Yes.”
Through nearly 25 minutes of play, the Rangers had mustered only four shots on goal.
The MSG crowd sarcastically clapped as Mika Zibanejad recorded shot No. 4 in the second period.
The Blueshirts were already in a two-goal hole, which could’ve been three if not for Sullivan’s successful goalie interference challenge on Bryan Rust’s power-play goal in the first period.
Zibanejad then gave the Rangers a lifeline with a power play goal of his own halfway through the middle frame.
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The home team finally found its pushback and was able to play a much more competitive second period. Carrying it over, Taylor Raddysh knocked in a Vladislav Gavrikov feed to tie it up just under three minutes into the third.
“We’ve already addressed the circumstance that we’re in,” Sullivan said of his pre-trade deadline conversations with the team. “I don’t know that this week changes anything, based on what we’ve been dealing with the last three or four weeks. We’ve had conversations with the team and individuals around it, because it’s our job to try to help them navigate through their own respective circumstances to try to help them be the best versions of themselves. So we’ve had some conversations around it. The trade deadline is never an easy time for players. That’s just been my experience, both as a player, but also coaching a number of teams over the years. This week is always – there’s a level of uncertainty that players have to deal with. It’s just the reality of the business part of what we all sign up for.
“Everybody understands it, but I don’t think it makes it any easier. I think these guys are all human beings, and to have some certainty in their life is comforting. This is never an easy time for players.”
