Silverman: For Consistency's Sake, Rangers Must Build On Blowout Of Penguins

By Steve Silverman
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The Rangers showed Tuesday night that they can look at themselves in the mirror, feel absolutely disgusted and then come back with a monumental effort that allows them to handle the best team in the league with ease.

That's great -- for one night -- but it doesn't prove anything other than that the team has the ability to compete with the best teams in the league when it wants to.

That's a good thing to know after some of the Rangers' most recent efforts. They systematically took apart the red-hot Pittsburgh Penguins in a 5-0 victory that was both shocking and reassuring.

It came on the heels of an inexplicable 3-1 loss to Edmonton -- EDMONTON! -- at Madison Square Garden on Sunday night.

Alain Vigneault got his message across that the sloppy play was not going to be acceptable and that the Rangers needed to make an immediate change. (You wonder if Vigneault could deliver that same message to the New York Giants after their recent meltdown in Seattle.)

The win over the Penguins was good news and bad news. The good news is that the Rangers can really play with the best teams in the Eastern Conference when they are focused, determined and playing as a team.

The Rangers were not a bunch of individuals skating Tuesday night. They were a tight, focused, talented and effective team. After beating the Penguins and Canadiens in the playoffs last spring, there was a nagging feeling that the Rangers had gotten more than their share of breaks. They were a game away from being eliminated in the first round by the Penguins when they started a near-miraculous run in Game 5.

The win Tuesday was impressive. The Rangers outskated, outplayed and outhit the Penguins, and they started the game as if they knew they were the better team and they proved it for 60 minutes.

That's a huge accomplishment when the opposition has Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang and Chris Kunitz. Those players are capable of throwing the puck around like few others and filling the net over a short period of time in any game.

Henrik Lundqvist often comes up with his best efforts when the Rangers need them most, and when he looks at the opposition's bench and sees the best players in the game, he raises his level of play. He also knows that when Marc-Andre Fleury is in the net, he can fill his opposing number's head with all kinds of worry and doubt.

Fleury may have been given a vote of confidence by the Penguins in the form of a new contract that will pay him $5.75 million over the next four seasons, but he knows he doesn't belong in the same discussion with Lundqvist, Jonathan Quick or Tuukka Rask. He's not one of the best goalies in the league, and he has proven that with subpar efforts in each of the last five postseasons.

Fleury sees Lundqvist in the Rangers' goal, and he knows that he's going to make a telling mistake before "The King" will. No amount of money is going to change that.

The lesson that comes out of a 5-0 win over the Penguins that saw goals from Mats Zuccarello, Kevin Klein, Derick Brassard, Marty St. Louis and Rick Nash is that the Rangers now have to repeat that effort if they are going to be taken seriously.

Not just once or twice, either. They need to reel off three or four wins in a row or five out of six. Consistency is what makes a great hockey team, not just one good game out of every three.

This should be obvious, but Brassard said after the game that one of the reasons the Rangers played so well is that they knew they were facing one of the best teams in the league. They have to know that they must put as much effort into their next game against the reeling Colorado Avalanche on Thursday as they did on Tuesday.

The Rangers will see the Penguins again over the weekend, and they will follow that trip to the Consol Energy Center with home games against Tampa Bay and Philadelphia. The Rangers will be tested, and the level of the opposition means they will likely come with their best efforts.

However, if they play like empty sweaters against the Avs, everything they gained against the Penguins will fly away like so much dust in the wind.

Consistency is all that is being asked of them.

Follow Steve on Twitter at @ProFootballBoy

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