If this season ends up being different for the Rangers, if, by the middle of April and the end of the 84-game marathon, they end up finding themselves on the right side of the playoff cutline, then Thursday — with just over two minutes left, when nearly half of the Rangers’ bench spilled onto the ice to celebrate Igor Shesterkin’s empty-net goal — will serve as the lasting image for when it all started to shift.
Because throughout their 5-1 win against the Lightning, who, for the better part of the last eight years, have served as an Eastern Conference measuring stick, on Thursday, the blueprint for this iteration of the Blueshirts emerged.
They exorcised their Garden woes from last season. The newcomers — both the hyped and the under-the-radar additions — contributed. All four lines generated chances. All three defensive pairings limited the Tampa Bay opportunities. Shesterkin was Shesterkin and even managed the first goalie goal in franchise history to boot.
And behind goals from Mika Zibanejad, Pavel Dorofeyev, Eeli Tolvanen, Gabe Perreault and, of course, Shesterkin, the Rangers (1-1-0) secured their first win of the season and, for at least one night inside a lively Garden, made their home struggles from last season an afterthought to the tune of a statement victory.
The Garden fans, which begged Shesterkin to shoot at the empty net earlier in the third, erupted as the puck bounced off the end boards, off his stick and down the ice.
Teammates engulfed him near the boards.
It took until the Rangers’ fifth game at the Garden last year to score their fifth home goal. Their goal drought hit 180:57 to start the year, and, in a way, it foreshadowed what followed the rest of the year — with the Blueshirts winning just 14 games at their home rink. The Rangers’ veterans and Mike Sullivan all echoed a similar sentiment during training camp, though.
Sullivan called them a “forward-thinking group.” J.T. Miller called it a “fresh slate” with a new group of pieces who had a “great vibe” right now.
And after a dud in the opener, the Rangers started to back up those visions. Dorofeyev, acquired after scoring 72 times the last two years, factored into the Rangers’ first two goals. While on the power play, his shot went off the crossbar and right to Zibanejad, who sent the puck past Andrei Vasilevskiy for the Blueshirts’ first tally of the season.
Then, just over five minutes later, he added his first goal since joining the franchise. Oliver Bjorkstrand stole the puck from the Lightning and raced in with Dorofeyev on an odd-man rush, sliding the puck over for the winger to flip it in.
Those two goals alone flashed some strides from the Rangers, even if they unfolded against a Tampa Bay team playing its first game of the year. They added a third goal early in the second when Tolvanen sent a puck toward the net that went off a Lightning defenseman and into the net as Will Cuylle crashed into Vasilevskiy.
But even after Tampa Bay got a goal back when Nikita Kucherov’s pass deflected off Noah Laba’s stick and into the net, the Rangers didn’t crumble. Rookie Albert Smits had a strong pinch to keep a sequence alive, and it ended with Perreault deflecting an Adam Fox shot off his stick, off his skate and into the net with under four minutes remaining in the second.
The Rangers didn’t suffer a collapse after the Kucherov goal like they might’ve last season. Even after they needed to kill six power-play chances, they didn’t fold. “Igor’s better” chants echoed throughout the Garden as the Rangers killed a delay of game penalty in the third.
Fans who spent plenty of time last year booing them gave them a standing ovation at the end of the second. They yelled for Shesterkin — who made 23 saves — to shoot it with the empty net instead of trying to fire the president and general manager or booing miscues on the ice.
And after the public retool and trade deadline sale of last season, after the new additions and majors trades of the offseason, it felt like, for 60 minutes, even had started to veer in the right direction.
