MONTREAL – Their victory Tuesday over a red-hot Carolina Hurricanes squad that is one of the elite teams in the Eastern Conference said a lot about the Rangers.
Their victory Thursday over the lowly Montreal Canadiens in noisy Bell Centre may have said more.
The Rangers scored three goals in the second period and handled the basement-dwelling Canadiens, 4-1, to earn their third straight victory. They are 11-2-1 in their last 14 games and, with the Devils’ loss to St. Louis, pulled within one point behind New Jersey for second place in the Metropolitan Division.
The Rangers and Devils play each other for the final time this season on Saturday afternoon in Newark.
“I think over the course of the last over 15, 16 (games), outside of the Washington game, we've been pretty good,’’ Rangers captain Jacob Trouba said at Thursday’s morning skate. “There's going to be games where you're off, and obviously the Washington game wasn't our best. But you try to play that consistent game as much as you can. It doesn't really matter who you're playing, or if it's Carolina or whoever.’’
Having beaten Carolina and ending the Hurricanes’ 11-game winning streak, the Rangers were hoping they weren’t going to suffer a letdown Thursday against the struggling Canadiens, who had lost five straight and were 1-8-1 in their previous 10 games.
In the first period, the Rangers seemed to have the jump on the Canadiens early, no surprise given the hosts were playing their first home game in nearly three weeks, after coming off a seven-game road trip. The Rangers had the first five shots on goal of the game, but Montreal, whose first shot on goal came with 3:07 remaining in the period, finished the period strong, getting four shots on goaltender Jaroslav Halak (17 saves) with some of them from close range.
But Halak stood strong and the period ended 0-0. The Rangers then took control in the second period.
It started when the Rangers took the first penalty of the game, a too many men on the ice infraction, at 5:52. The Rangers took the lead on a shorthanded goal by Chris Kreider, his 18th goal of the season and his second shorthanded. The Rangers scored two more goals before the period was over, on a couple of long shots, by defenseman Braden Schneider and center Filip Chytil, who scored 59 seconds apart.
Schneider scored his fifth goal of the season at 12:28, taking a pass from Artemi Panarin and firing a wrist shot from the right point that went high and appeared to go in off the glove of Montreal goalie Jake Allen (27 saves). Rangers center Vincent Trocheck was in front, but didn’t really appear to screen the goaltender.
Chytil, who had been dropped to the fourth line in the third period of Tuesday’s game after his line was on for two goals-against that coach Gerard Gallant did not like, scored his second goal since the demotion (he’d scored into an empty net against Carolina) at 13:27.
Ryan Lindgren took a puck off the side boards and slid it to Chytil, wide open at the top of the left circle. The 23-year-old Czech wound up and fired a one-timer that got by Allen to make it 3-0.
Montreal broke Halak’s bid for a shutout with 5:14 remaining on a goal by Joel Armia, but Chytil scored an empty-net goal on a power play with 1:10 remaining to seal it.
