The internal battle between knowing they can play better and still picking up wins continued for the Rangers on Thursday night at Madison Square Garden.
A Sharks team that has been playing much better than its 0-7-2 start to the season scored the first goal of the game, which has resulted in a loss for the Blueshirts every other time this season.
Not this time, however, as the home team rallied for a 3-2 victory in a matchup that took a backseat after Filip Chytil couldn’t finish the game following a collision with K’Andre Miller in the second period.
Chytil briefly returned to the Rangers bench afterward, but he only took one shift.
He then was ruled out for the third period with what the Rangers described as an upper-body injury.
The win comes at a time when head coach Peter Laviolette has admitted that members of what’s considered the bottom six and third defensive pairing have earned more ice time lately.
The Rangers’ performances in the previous four games forced Laviolette to go back to the Artemi Panarin-Vincent Trocheck-Alexis Lafreniere line, as well as the top-four configuration on defense they’ve used three times prior to Thursday night with K’Andre Miller next to Adam Fox and Ryan Lindgren alongside Jacob Trouba.
It all paid dividends for the Rangers, who pulled ahead 3-1 toward the end of the second on a sweet Trocheck deflection off a Panarin feed.
Now facing the possibility of losing Chytil, the Rangers would find themselves in a difficult spot. The organization is not only incredibly thin at center, but Chytil has been one of the team’s most consistent forwards, driving their strongest line of late.
While San Jose had gone 5-2-1 in its last eight, the Sharks were still the fifth-worst team in the NHL entering their first game at the Garden since picking up Barclay Goodrow on waivers in a prearranged deal with the Rangers this past summer.
The Rangers needed a definitive win against a team they were expected to beat — and they delivered.
The Sharks opened the scoring on a fluky goal when a shot from Timothy Liljegren bounced through traffic and over goalie Igor Shesterkin just under three minutes into the game.
But the Rangers deserved to be trailing going into the first intermission amid their continued disconnectedness. A lack of cohesion in the lineup has been apparent for weeks now.
If Chytil is unavailable, that has some real potential to exacerbate the Rangers’ dysfunction.
The win was needed, but the loss the Rangers might have to endure could be bigger.