Colin Stephenson: Live in the moment Rangers fans. It's a good feeling right now.
Rangers goaltender Igor Shesterkin and left wing Alexis Lafreniere celebrate their win against the Ilanders in an NHL hockey game at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
With four straight wins and a spot at the top of the league after five games, the Rangers are off to a dream start. Everything is happening just as they would have scripted if they could.
So, is it OK for Ranger fans to get excited about what possibilities exist for the team this season?
It is only five games into an 84-game season, and naysayers will point out that the Rangers haven’t exactly faced a Murderers' Row-type schedule. The best team they played in their winning streak was Tampa Bay, which they beat, 5-1, in their home opener, with Igor Shesterkin scoring a goal. But the Lightning were playing their first game and clearly needed to work some kinks out. They’ve won their last two games and won’t be a walkover next time.
Shutting out a Detroit team that is dealing with all kinds of problems -- and was also playing its first game -- was certainly not shocking, and neither was beating a good Utah on the second night of a back-to-back. Besting the archrival Islanders is always good, of course, but the Isles started Semyon Varlamov in goal. The 38-year-old backup was coming back from two partial knee replacements, playing his first NHL game in nearly two years. Varlamov just playing at all was a wonderful story, but Ilya Sorokin might have saved that first shot by Oliver Bjorkstrand on Tuesday night. Who knows where the game would have gone from there?
Let’s see, then, how the Rangers fare in their next game on Friday in Washington against a Capitals team who most observers are picking to vie with the Stanley Cup champion Carolina Hurricanes for supremacy of the Metropolitan Division. Washington will be a stiff test. They missed the playoffs by a hair last season, then brought in Alex Tuch, Jordan Kyrou and Boone Jenner over the summer. Also, Alex Ovechkin just announced that he will retire after this season, so expect the Capitals to play with extra emotion.
Still, after all of those disclaimers, watching how the Rangers won their last four games reveals positive signs suggesting to even the most jaded fan that this team is much improved over the Blueshirt squads of the past two years.
First, Shesterkin has been the best version of himself in his four starts. He had a great preseason and appears to be in midseason form already. Named the NHL’s First Star of the Week, he is 3-1 with a 1.75 goals-against average and .926 save percentage. Over the years, the Rangers have needed him to be superhuman most nights -- and so far, he looks like he’ll be exactly that
They also have tightened up their transition defense over the last four games, giving up far fewer many odd-man rushes than they did in their season-opening 3-0 loss to the Bruins in Boston. Giving up odd-man rushes is something that has been a recurring problem for this team over the past several seasons, so it’s certainly possible the discipline they’re playing with now will erode as the season progresses. But if these last four games are an early indicator that they really have improved their transition defense, that would lighten the burden on Shesterkin (who only faced 19 shots against the Isles) and help keep him fresher late in the season.
After the win Tuesday, in which they allowed the Islanders only five shots on goal in the third period, the Rangers talked about how pleased they are with how they’ve played in the final period.
“We keep playing,’’ Mika Zibanejad said. “We don't back off… I think we're confident in our game, and what we're capable of doing. I think we just trust it. We trust that it's going to generate looks. It's going to generate chances for us if we do the right thing, and so far, so good.”
So far, so good, indeed. But can we trust this team to keep up all this good work for the entire season and fight its way back into the playoffs?
Well, that remains to be seen, of course. That’s why they play the games, after all.
For now, the best thing fans can do is just enjoy the moment and appreciate what they’re seeing from their team. Four straight wins matches the longest winning streak last year’s Rangers had, and that came in March. So this team is well ahead of that pace.
Colin Stephenson covers the Rangers for Newsday. He has spent more than two decades covering the NHL and just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
