If this is life without Rick Nash …
No, no, no, the Rangers aren’t allowing anyone to go there, saying there is no long-term concern for their star winger, who missed Tuesday night’s 1-0 win over the Flames at the Garden with “neck spasms.” He’s considered “day-to-day,” and coach Alain Vigneault equated the injury of the second-leading goal-scorer in the league to that of sleeping awkwardly.
Vigneault hadn’t even ruled out the chance Nash might have practiced on Wednesday, before practice was canceled. So it’s certainly not impossible he’ll be ready for Thursday’s Garden match against the Coyotes.
But again, if this is the Rangers without Rick Nash … well, what ensued was a game of offensive calamity and defensive — prowess?
How about we let Rangers defenseman Marc Staal describe it:
“Probably better watching paint dry,” the alternate captain told The Post through a sore throat. “They might have set a record for icings in the first two periods. Every time we got momentum, or got after them, they iced it. They just killed the momentum. Just one of those games — sloppy, bouncing-puck types of games where it’s a tough one to stay patient.”
For the Rangers (37-16-6), patience paid off 3:00 into the third period when Kevin Hayes, the man who replaced Nash on the top line, managed to bat in a Derick Brassard cross-ice pass — the result of an awful turnover from Calgary defenseman Dennis Wideman.
And that was it. That was all the offense needed to extinguish the Flames (32-24-4), and all the offense needed for Cam Talbot and the Nash-less Blueshirts.
“I’m nothing like Rick Nash,” Hayes said, “but I was lucky enough to get a goal out there and produce. It was a good game.”
Hayes might not have been an obvious choice to replace Nash on the left with Brassard and Mats Zuccarello, as the 22-year-old came up through Boston College as a right wing and has almost exclusively played center in his rookie campaign since making the team out of training camp. To say his line wasn’t entirely effective through the first 40 minutes might be a bit unfair — because no line, on either team, generated anything that resembled sustained momentum.
“It was a playoff-type game,” said Hayes, who bested his Boston College buddy, Johnny Gaudreau, the Flames’ talented rookie forward who was on the ice when Hayes scored. “Great defensive teams, good goalies. Both goalies made great saves. We’re lucky to get two points.”
It’s true that Talbot (21 saves) did make some big stops for the Blueshirts, especially the left-pad stop through traffic on a David Jones tip with under three minutes left. In the 11 games since starter Henrik Lundqvist went down with the vascular injury in his neck, the Rangers have gone 8-1-2, and had a chance to leapfrog the Islanders atop the Metropolitan Division until their suburban rivals won 5-1 against the visiting Coyotes. The Rangers still hold three games in hand.
“It’s been a lot of fun to play this amount of games,” said Talbot, who has started 10 of 11. “I think I’ve played more in the past three weeks than I’ve played in the first four months. It’s nice to kind of get in a rhythm now and to be on the winning side and helping these guys get some points in the standings while Hanky is out of the lineup.”
Talbot’s counterpart, Karri Ramo, made a breathtaking save on J.T. Miller during a first-period power play, reaching back with his glove to steal one off the goal line. But from there until Hayes’ goal, it sure seemed as if the Rangers were playing a completely different game, their four-goals per contest in the past 10 seeming like something from another universe.
“The way we play, we’re used to getting a lot of chances, playing fast, being good off the rush — and that wasn’t happening,” Staal said. “It’s a credit to the guys in the room realizing how we needed to win. We ended up doing it.”