The task facing the Rangers, if they are to stay in the race for a playoff spot as time runs out in the 2020-21 season, is simple, if daunting: They need to win all their remaining games, to keep themselves in position to sneak into the postseason, in the event the Boston Bruins drop a game or two somewhere along the way.
It is especially important to win the games against the teams behind you in the standings, like Tuesday night’s game at the Garden against the Buffalo Sabres.
"These teams have given everybody a hard time,’’ Rangers coach David Quinn said of the Sabres and Devils, the two teams at the bottom of the East Division. "You better be ready to go when you play these guys. They’re good, you know, They’re well coached . . . . They play hard. And I mean, it’s not easy beating them. If you take your foot off the pedal, you don’t have a chance to beat them.’’
The Rangers appeared to take their foot off the pedal against the Sabres on Tuesday night, but they managed to right themselves in the third period and, on goals by Alexis Lafreniere and Mika Zibanejad, they were able to pull out the 3-1 victory they needed to complete a sweep of the two-game set with Buffalo and stay alive in the playoff race.
Of course the Rangers can’t do anything about the games in which they’re not playing. With Boston’s 3-1 victory over the Penguins in Pittsburgh, however, the Rangers were unable to gain ground on the fourth-place Bruins in the race for the final playoff spot in the East Division. The Rangers still trail the Bruins by four points, with six games remaining. Boston has eight.
However, the Rangers may have another avenue to get to the postseason. The Islanders, who have been stumbling of late, lost their third straight game, 1-0, to the Capitals in Washington, and are only five points ahead of the Rangers in the East. And the Rangers and Islanders play the next two games against each other, Thursday at the Garden, and Saturday at Nassau Coliseum.
The Rangers did not look like a team desperate to win in the first period. The Sabres took it to them from the first shift of the game, when Casey Mittelstadt and Tage Thompson had tough shots against Igor Shesterkin before the game was 30 seconds old. Shesterkin was up to the task, and he needed to be in the opening 20 minutes, when the Rangers were outshot 16-6, and yet managed to escape with the score tied, 0-0. For the game, Shesterkin would make 36 saves, many of them of the top shelf variety.
Brendan Smith’s long shot through a screen beat Buffalo goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen to give the Rangers the lead at 2:22 of the second period, and the Rangers appeared to grasp control of the game, finally dominating possession in the Sabres’ zone and piling up the shots.
But they couldn’t get a second goal, and when Filip Chytil took a tripping penalty with 32.1 seconds remaining in the period, Buffalo had a chance to tie it and they took advantage, when Sam Reinhart scored his 22nd goal of the season with 3.2 seconds left in the period to make it 1-1.
Lafreniere, the No. 1 pick overall in last fall’s NHL draft, banged in a pass from Ryan Strome at 9:49 of the third period for his 10th goal of the season, and third in the last six games, to give the Rangers a 2-1 lead. Then, with the Rangers failing to convert on a five-on-three power play, Zibanejad scored after the first penalty was released, popping in a pass from Chris Kreider for his 20th goal of the season, at 13:49.
