LAS VEGAS — It had been 54 days since the Rangers last followed up a win with another win.
Fifty-four days of losses piling up in bunches, and feeling like every step forward led to two steps back.
The Blueshirts put a stop to that trend with a convincing 2-1 win over the Golden Knights Saturday night at T-Mobile Arena, where the visitors proved they can still hang with — and defeat — one of the top teams in the NHL.
It has been weeks and weeks on a downward trajectory, but Saturday night was perhaps the Rangers’ first time looking up in quite awhile.
“I thought we were right on point right from the start,” head coach Peter Laviolette said after his team improved to 20-20-2 on the season. “For me, it’s a follow-up from the last game, as well. So that’s even a better point, too, is it was a really solid effort and game at home [against the Devils] and then to come on the road a day later, take the travel, get out of here and play tonight.
“I thought the guys — everything, from the drop of the puck the first period was excellent. And then just followed it through for 60 minutes.”
The Rangers went toe-to-toe with the Golden Knights through the first two periods.
It resulted in a 1-1 tie at the start of the final frame, but the Rangers broke it at the 5:57 mark before pushing through all the way to the end.
The game had largely been played five-on-five, and the Rangers posted one of their better performances at even-strength so far this season. A beautiful tip by Adam Edstrom on a Jonny Brodzinski shot in transition allowed the Rangers to get the lead they needed.
“I know [Matt Rempe] got it on the wall, great outlet pass to Jonny [Brodzinski] there and we kind of talked about crashing the net so I was just trying to get in there,” Edstrom said of his third goal of the season and the first game-winner of his career. “Got a tip on the puck and it went in.”
Not only did they fend off another two Golden Knights power plays in the third, including 57 seconds of six-on-four play with Vegas’ net empty, but the Rangers survived the home team’s 11 shots on goal, made smart decisions in the defensive zone and maintained their offensive push to secure the victory.
It had fans clad in red, white and blue proudly shouting ‘Let’s Go Rangers!’ inside enemy territory in the final minutes.
Picking up their fourth win in their last six games, the Rangers appear to be on the up after a humbling start to the season.
Mika Zibanejad extended his point streak to six games with an assist on the Rangers’ first goal from Vincent Trocheck, who has started playing with the insatiable fire that made his last season so successful.
Both teams capitalized on their very first power plays, which didn’t come until the middle frame.
After the ref had to repeatedly tell Trocheck to get in the box for a holding call on Tomas Hertl that he vehemently refuted, the Golden Knights made quick work of their man-advantage with a goal from Vegas captain Mark Stone at the side of the Rangers net.
Keegan Kolesar got called for tripping K’Andre Miller just over two minutes later, however, to give the Rangers a chance to respond — and they did.
Absorbing a hard slap shot from Zibanejad, Trocheck backhanded the loose puck past Vegas goalie Ilya Samsanov to even the score at one-all.
“It’s obviously big, it’s a real good team over there,” Ryan Lindgren said. “Two in a row. We’re going to play a real good Colorado team [on Tuesday], so just got to keep building off of it. Just try and play better and better every game.”
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