Rangers’ first real taste of 2024 playoff adversity ends with a win

It’s easy to view the Rangers ride through the early portion of these Stanley Cup playoffs as smooth and without a lot of bumps in the road.

The Rangers have, after all, now won all six of their playoff games after Tuesday night’s stirring 4-3 comeback double-overtime victory over the Hurricanes in Game 2 of the second-round series at the Garden.

Their four-game sweep of the offensively challenged Capitals in the first round was never truly in doubt.

In their Game 1 win over Carolina Sunday at the Garden, they led 3-1 after the first period and had control of the game throughout.

And their win on Tuesday — made possible in the end by a Vincent Trocheck goal at 7:24 of the second overtime — was their 29th comeback victory of the season.

So, for you dreamers amongst Rangers fans, there surely must be visions of the team mowing through these playoffs without much resistance dancing in your heads.

But no team in NHL history has gone 16-0 in the postseason en route to winning a Stanley Cup.

And, even if the Rangers are good enough (and fortunate enough) to end their 30-year drought without a Cup, they’re not going to win 16 in a row to get there.

Adversity lurks. And the Rangers got 87 minutes and 24 seconds of it on Tuesday night before Trocheck ended it against his former team.

Adversity was there with 5.4 seconds remaining in the first period when the Hurricanes took a 2-1 lead into the intermission after a tip-in goal by defenseman Dmitry Orlov to silence the buzzing Garden.

That marked the first time in six playoff games the Rangers trailed after any period.

Adversity was there again with 1:42 remaining in the second period when Carolina’s trade-deadline prize Jake Guentzel beat Rangers goalie Igor Shesterkin with a one-timer blast from the left circle for a 3-2 Carolina lead.

The Rangers got their first true dose of postseason adversity on Tuesday night and they didn’t blink.

Now they take a 2-0 lead to Raleigh for Game 3 on Thursday night and Game 4 on Saturday and know they’ll be facing an even more desperate Carolina team than the one that pushed them to the limit on Tuesday night.

“They’re a good team,” Rangers coach Peter Laviolette said afterward. “They’re a really good team. So, this isn’t going to be control all 60 minutes and move on to the next game. You’re going to have to fight.

“It’s probably the way it is from here on out. This game was fast, it was furious, it was physical, there was a lot of energy and emotion inside the game. It’s everything that you would want in a playoff game.”

And this resilient, talented and confident Rangers team looks like everything Laviolette could want in the playoffs.

Teams with 2-0 leads in best-of-seven series have won 86 percent of those series in Stanley Cup playoff history.

That, of course, won’t be the way the Rangers are thinking when they lace up their skates for Game 3, because the Rangers know, as good as things look now, adversity lurks on the next shift, in the next game, in the next series … if there is a next series.

Nothing that’s as difficult to win as the Stanley Cup — arguably the most difficult trophy to win in all of team sports — comes easy.

“There’s never any panic in the room in between periods or whenever it may be,” Rangers captain Jacob Trouba said after the game. “Confidence is something you build throughout the course of the year, and I don’t think we ever feel like we’re out of games. We have high-end players that have the ability to put the puck in the net.”

So, there was Chris Kreider, their all-timing leading scorer in the playoffs, burying a rebound to tie the game at 3-3 with 13:53 remaining in the third period. It was his 43rd career playoff goal, 18th on the power play.

And it gave the Rangers life. Got them to overtime.

So, too, did Shesterkin, who for the first time this postseason was asked to put the team on his back. And he did, saving 54 of 57 Carolina shots, and making some positively stunning stops in overtime.

“It’s tough to beat our team when he’s making saves like that,” Trocheck said.

Asked what the discussion inside the dressing room between the end of regulation and overtime is like, Trouba smiled and said, “The intermission before overtime is always like, ‘All right, here we go. It’s playoff time.’ It’s an emotional ride. It’s fun.”

This Rangers team is built for this, beginning with Laviolette, who’s been there and done everything in the league, and including his veteran leadership amongst the players, who don’t blink.

Adversity?

Bring it on.