Listen closely. Can you hear it? Can you hear the heartbeat of the Rangers?
Sure can.
Ninety minutes before last night’s match against the Sharks, Heartbeat Todd Harvey, working on his sticks in the Garden corridor outside his team’s locker room, scrunched up his face in disgust.
“I have been brutal,” he said. “I have got to get going tonight. I have to have a big game.”
And on the first shift of the match, Harvey proceeded to pound Marcus Ragnarsson into the boards on the forecheck. It was just the start for the winger with the smaller man’s body but the biggest man’s heart.
There were seven recorded hits on the night, energetic yapping and consistent forechecking. But that wasn’t all. For in addition, there was the goalmouth score that got the Rangers even from an early 2-0 hole, and then the hard-work assist on the goal that stood as the winner in the 4-3 triumph that brought the Rangers back to .500.
“The kid plays hard all the time and brings a lot of energy to the team, everybody knows that,” said Wayne Gretzky, whose feed set up Harvey for his trying goal at 3:06 of the third, and who has struck up a genuine friendship with the young man. “He’s a workaholic. He really cares.”
He cares and he works, but for the last few weeks, Harvey’s heart metaphorically had been short a ventricle. He’d been playing with a right thumb that had been badly bruised by a slash in Buffalo on Dec. 11. He missed the next two games (the first officially on a suspension he earned for a late hit on Vaclav Varada), played in one though unable to grip his stick with two hands, then sat out a pair before returning for the final three games of last week’s road trip.
“The thumb was bad, but I have to find a way to play through it,” Harvey had said. “I can’t use it as an excuse for myself. I have to find a way to contribute.”
From the start last night, while most of his teammates fell to the NHL’s dreaded “First Home Game Following an Extended Road Trip Flu,” Harvey was working. Just took the rest of the Rangers awhile to join him.
“We came out a little flat, but we didn’t panic. We know that if we stuck to our system we’d get some by [Steve] Shields,” said Harvey.
The Rangers were down 2-0 six minutes into the second, but rather than panic, they picked up the pace and were by far the stronger team the rest of the way. It might have reflected the confidence the team built by taking the final two of the road trip. It might also have been a benefit of the team’s first optional home morning skate of the season.
“When you’re rested by not skating in the morning, it’s going to pay off in the third period,” said Ulf Samuelsson, who had a strong game. “We skated a lot stronger.”
Mike Knuble had brought the Rangers back to within 2-1 at 12:29 of the second, driving to the net to redirect Samuelsson’s feed past Shields, who played so that Mike Vernon who would rested to face the Devils tonight at the Meadowlands. And after Harvey tied it at 3:06 of the third, Kevin Stevens gave the Rangers a 3-2 lead just 25 seconds later, on a backhand goal that would be categorized as marginal at best.
In getting back to .500 for the first time since Dec. 14, the Rangers have taken advantage of their opponents’ slipshod goaltending. Arturs Irbe and reliever Trevor Kidd were both shaky a week ago Saturday in the Rangers’ 6-3 win in Carolina; Craig Billington was miserable on Thursday in the Rangers’ 6-3 win in Colorado. And Shields, who allowed a Harvey shot to leak so that Adam Graves could steer the puck in inches from the net for a 4-2 lead at 14:08 last night, never came up with a big save.
Still, who’s complaining? If the Rangers are going to make the playoffs, they’re going to get there by taking advantage of whatever they can.
“Coming back the way we did, I think that showed the growth of our hockey club,” said Muckler, who, with the Devils coming in tomorrow night, has scheduled an optional practice for this morning at Rye.
The Rangers had rallied to win from a two-goal hole just once before this season, that the Dec. 1, 5-4 OT victory over the Panthers. But they feel they have the weapons to rally when necessary.
“Everyone makes mistakes, but we don’t have to panic when we do,” Samuelsson said. “We have the feeling since we got Petr [Nedved] that we can produce.”
And said Harvey, “We thought that if we kept on them, kept working them and dumped the puck in, we would eventually get to them.”
So listen? Can you hear it?
Thump … thump … thump.