Rangers 4 – Bruins 2
It was what it was – a reasonably solid, workmanlike victory for the Rangers over a Boston team that’s spiraling toward the Blueshirts in the standings.
And even though this already is the time of year when results become paramount, the means to last night’s end were especially noteworthy.
The team won the game, but overriding the group effort, there was Bobby Holik’s dominating work against Joe Thornton. And, as critically, there was Mike Dunham’s ability to be in the right place at the right time after a run of games in which the goaltender seemed to be just a tad out of place.
“We don’t have the time to lose a point here or there,” Holik said after the 4-2 victory that lifted the Rangers back to NHL break-even and within five points of the fifth-place Bruins, winners of one of their last 10 (1-5-4).
“There are things we did well, there are things we didn’t do as well. . . . I wouldn’t go much farther than that.”
Accurate as Holik almost always is – would that some of the team’s snipers (cough, cough, Alex Kovalev) were as accurate – the Rangers will not go any farther than the end of the regular season unless Glen Sather uses No. 16 in the role of his lifetime.
Sather hemmed and hawed after the match about why he went that way last night, but if the coach does not sic No. 16 against Mats Sundin when the Maple Leafs visit the Garden on Friday, congress should convene hearings on the matter.
Last night, Holik not only eliminated Thornton while matched against him for all but four partial even-strength shifts, he scored twice himself, once by going to the net to tie the game midway through the first after Kovalev used his muscle down low against the Boston captain, then by getting the clinching empty-netter.
“I can’t keep repeating myself, but this is the way I like to play,” Holik said. “But I have to play the way the team wants me to play.”
Holik, of course, had help. He had help from linemates Kovalev and Martin Rucinsky; help from Eric Lindros, who not only was very sharp with the puck, but in short-shifting himself in order to allow for apt changes.
The help from the Darius Kasparaitis-Greg de Vries pair the coaching staff wanted on as much as possible against Thornton and wingers Mike Knuble and Glen Murray was notable, as well.
So Holik was not alone. Neither was Lindros when he sparred late inthe first with Sean O’Donnell, linemates Matt Barnaby and Chris Simon immediately joining the fray.
“Everyone looks out for each other,” said No. 88. “That’s a team.”
Petr Nedved scored twice, once on a wicked short-side, top-shelf wrist shot and then on a whirling snapper from the slot to give the Rangers a 3-1 lead early in the second. But Boston got one back late in the period on a P.J. Axelsson breakaway, and had the better of play in the third.
Indeed, the B’s had a glorious opportunity to tie when, with a minute to go and the sixth attacker on, Patrice Bergeron’s shot from the right doorstep nicked either Dunham’s skate or pad and skittered just wide.
“I’m not sure what it hit, but he had the whole net; I think he even had his arms up,” Dunham said. “I was lucky; but then, I felt I was moving well, and in control, and in position be lucky.”
And if Dunham was in the right position, so was Holik.