If you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone, the Rangers have known for months what they had but were forced to let get away because of a cap squeeze in Carl Hagelin.
But boy, oh, boy was the point driven home with an exclamation point as a hammer when No. 62 came back to town Sunday with the Penguins and created chaos with his speed on both sides of the puck to help boost Pittsburgh to a 3-2 overtime victory on Sidney Crosby’s deflection from in front at 4:30 of extra time.
“Everyone knows what kind of a player Hags was for us, and he’s the same kind of player for them,” Marc Staal said after the defeat reduced the Rangers’ lead to three points over the Penguins for second place in the Metro Division, with Pittsburgh having seven games remaining as opposed to the Rangers’ six. “He caused havoc with his speed.”
The Rangers dealt Hagelin to the Ducks at last year’s draft for Emerson Etem and a second-rounder. The Swede may have dressed like a Duck, but he never fit in as one before Penguins general manager Jim Rutherford acquired him for David Perron in January in a canny move.
“They play a lot like we like to,” said Staal, whose brother, Eric Staal, scored both Rangers goals. “You always have to be aware of him. He was a big part of our team. That’s no secret.”
The Rangers battled gamely, if not always artfully. The offense went in fits and starts in a game played that way even though the second period was dominated by the Penguins’ second-line twin-engine jets on the wing in Hagelin and Phil Kessel.
Indeed, it was Hagelin’s speed that created both of the Penguins’ regulation goals. He raced back through the neutral zone to make up 15 feet on J.T. Miller and turned the play around before Matt Cullen chopped one out of midair through Henrik Lundqvist’s pads to tie the game 1-1 at 15:49 after Eric Staal had scored at 4:19.
Then, it was Hagelin in the second, racing to force Lundqvist into a puck-moving blunder on which No. 62 leaped on a failed backhand pass/clear in the left corner and got a shot on an off-balance King that became the rebound on which Kessel capitalized at 8:36 to tie 2-2 after Eric Staal’s second at 2:07.
“The puck bounced as I was going to play it, and I kind of missed it,” Lundqvist said. “Obviously I need to make a better play.”
The Rangers never quite established a ground game or puck control, though they had nothing to be ashamed of. They survived the opening 1:59 of overtime shorthanded after Derick Brassard picked up a mindless high-sticking penalty with one second remaining in regulation.
They did a pretty good job negating Crosby most of the night, until he was able to get the winner with Mats Zuccarello as close to him as No. 87’s own shadow. But they never could quite shake free, never could quite use their speed and skill to put the Penguins back on their heels.
Indeed, the Staal-Kevin Hayes-Jesper Fast trio clearly was the Rangers’ best line. And Staal, who had gone without a goal in nine straight and had only one in 13 games as a Ranger, was the team’s best forward, dominant at times with the puck below the hash marks. Indeed, Staal had three glorious chances from around the net on which to complete a hat trick in the second period alone.
“It doesn’t matter how many times in your career you’ve put it in the back of the net, but when it hasn’t gone in much recently or much all year, when it does, you can feel your confidence,” said Staal, who has 13 goals on the year. “And confidence is so important.”
As dogged as the Rangers were, they never quite had a grasp on the game. As such, after losing their third straight this month to the Penguins (0-2-1) after going 11-1-1 against Pittsburgh in the previous 13 dating back to Game 5 of the 2014 conference semis, the Blueshirts failed to secure their grasp on second place and corresponding first-round home-ice advantage.
“There’s a big possibility that this is the team we’re going to face pretty soon,” said Lundqvist. “It’s a pretty tight matchup.”
But this time, unlike the 2014 seven-game victory and last year’s five-game first-round triumph, Hagelin would be on the other side.
