RALEIGH, N.C. — The Rangers have been practicing the right way all year.
They easily handled whatever challenges the regular season threw at them. They lost more than two games in a row just once, dealt with several injuries, and fended off the Metropolitan Division-chasing Hurricanes.
For a brief moment, they behaved as a championship team should.
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On Thursday night, all that was put to the test. The Rangers entered the third period trailing 3-1 and looking ahead to a potential Game 7 against Carolina along with all of their opponents.
“It was calm,” captain Jacob Trouba said. “We just have confidence in the game we play. No one here was excited or screaming. Just go out there and play 20 minutes like we did.”
This was a referendum on the culture that was built, not just by Peter Laviolette, but by those who were here before him.
The Rangers made a clean pass, riding on a natural third-period hat trick from Chris Kreider to win 5-3 and advance to the conference finals for the second time in three years.
“I’m not surprised,” Laviolette said. “I think we’ve laid the foundations. And tonight, we’re going to show you what we’ve done so far, whether it’s practice, whether it’s games, whether it’s the games we had to come back to, whether it’s meetings, whether it’s the players’ responsibilities. It was something that had been built up over many days. So was the way they treated each other every day.
“I think it could happen tonight just knowing what we did this year.”
What happened was the product of a season in which the Rangers braced themselves for just such a moment.
“After my first run with the group, I think I remember the next thing.” [2022]You kind of have an idea of what playoff hockey is going to be like, but each series is very different and each team is very different from year to year,” Kreider said. “It’s hard to say, but the experience during the regular season and the way we prepare and the way we play for 82 years is more important.” [games] It helped establish our identity, but it also set up how we want to play at this point in the year. ”
After the debacle that befell this group last season against New Jersey, the Rangers built a seawall. Every team in the league is looking to do that, and every team talks about their resiliency and the intangibles of playing well.
But the Rangers’ barrier was solid even in the Hurricanes. And now they’re in the conference finals.
