DENVER — There were the Rangers on a power play with 2:40 remaining in the third period holding a 5-3 lead over the Avalanche.
And there was Marty St. Louis stapled to the bench for the duration of the man advantage, as he had been for all but one 43-second shift following an egregious giveaway deep in his own end off which Jarome Iginla capitalized at 6:43 of the third to detonate a Colorado two-goal rally that caught the Blueshirts at 3-3 just past the midway mark of the period before the Rangers regained control.
“I’m not playing with a lot of confidence right now,” St. Louis told The Post following the Blueshirts’ 6-3 victory that was keyed by the Kevin Hayes-Carl Hagelin-J.T. Miller unit and by Cam Talbot’s outstanding work under pressure in net. “I’ve gone through stretches like this before, and it’s not a fun place to be, but fortunately the team is winning.
“Sometimes the game gets hard. Sometimes life gets hard,” said St. Louis, who has gone 14 straight without a goal. “There’s only one way to get through it, and that’s by keeping your head up and continuing to work.
“I’m very disappointed with that mistake. You never want to make a mistake that leads to a goal,” No. 26 said. “But I’m going to do whatever it takes to try and get it together.
“The team is winning, so that helps you buy time to find your game.”
The Rangers are 3-1-1 in five since Talbot stepped in for Henrik Lundqvist, and are 8-3-1 in their past 12 matches heading into Saturday’s contest in Arizona that marks the end of this three-game trip on which the Blueshirts are unbeaten.
This was the second straight game in which the Rangers conspired to blow an early third-period two goal lead but nevertheless recovered. It’s a tough way to go about business.
“You don’t see that too much, where you give up two-goal leads in back-to-back games and win them both,” said Rick Nash, whose league-leading 34th goal gave the Rangers a 5-3 lead 3:40 after Hagelin had restored order with the game-winner at 12:02. “Losing leads like that isn’t something we can take lightly and it can’t happen.
“But on the positive side we showed a lot of character in winning both and we got some great goaltending from Cam.”
Talbot was under siege in the third period, the Avalanche recording the first 12 shots of the period in knotting the contest on Jan Hejda’s goal from close range at 10:44 after the defenseman recovered the puck after his initial try had been blocked by Dan Girardi.
But the goaltender maintained his cool in not only giving his team the chance to win, but winning it.
“It felt like a shooting gallery,” said Talbot, who had earlier stoned Iginla on a breakaway 3:35 into the second with a 2-0 lead. “I felt like every time I turned around the puck was coming back at us. We needed to weather the storm.
“I felt pretty good. I was sharp, attacking the shooter” Talbot said. “Every goalie wants to be able to perform in those situations.”
Hayes, who scored on a brilliant power and finesse move to the net in the second period that gave the Rangers a 2-0 lead, had two assists and a plus-four rating. Hagelin was plus-two. Miller, who had an assist, was plus-three for the unit that dominated the play down low.
“That line had an unbelievable game,” coach Alain Vigneault said. “Every time they were on the ice, things happened in the offensive zone.”
Dan Boyle, who scored the game’s opening goal in alone on Semyon Varlamov off a nifty feed from Hayes, had a plus-four night. Mats Zuccarello picked a corner for his third goal in two games to give the Rangers the 3-1 lead they took into the third after a resounding two-man penalty kill of 1:52 keyed by the Hagelin-Dom Moore-Ryan McDonagh threesome that was on for first 1:09 before it was followed by Derek Stepan, Marc Staal and Kevin Klein.
But 3-1 became 3-2 and then 3-3 before the game that had seemingly been won once, was won again.
Now, as St. Louis’ game has deserted him, it is on No. 26 to find it in the desert.