It’s easy to view the Rangers ride through the early portion of these Stanley Cup playoffs as smooth and without a lot of bumps in the road.
The Rangers have, after all, now won all six of their playoff games after Tuesday night’s stirring 4-3 comeback double-overtime victory over the Hurricanes in Game 2 of the second-round series at the Garden.
Their four-game sweep of the offensively challenged Capitals in the first round was never truly in doubt
In their Game 1 win over Carolina Sunday at the Garden, they led 3-1 after the first period and had control of the game throughout.
And their win on Tuesday — made possible in the end by a Vincent Trocheck goal at 7:24 of the second overtime — was their 29th comeback victory of the season.
So, for you dreamers amongst Rangers fans, there surely must be visions of the team mowing through these playoffs without much resistance dancing in your heads.
But no team in NHL history has gone 16-0 in the postseason en route to winning a Stanley Cup.
And, even if the Rangers are good enough (and fortunate enough) to end their 30-year drought without a Cup, they’re not going to win 16 in a row to get there.
Adversity lurks. And the Rangers got 87 minutes and 24 seconds of it on Tuesday night before Trocheck ended it against his former team.
Adversity was there with 5.4 seconds remaining in the first period when the Hurricanes took a 2-1 lead into the intermission after a tip-in goal by defenseman Dmitry Orlov to silence the buzzing Garden.
That marked the first time in six playoff games the Rangers trailed after any period.
Adversity was there again with 1:42 remaining in the second period when Carolina’s trade-deadline prize Jake Guentzel beat Rangers goalie Igor Shesterkin with a one-timer blast from the left circle for a 3-2 Carolina lead.
The Rangers got their first true dose of postseason adversity on Tuesday night and they didn’t blink.
Now they take a 2-0 lead to Raleigh for Game 3 on Thursday night and Game 4 on Saturday and know they’ll be facing an even more desperate Carolina team than the one that pushed them to the limit on Tuesday night.
“They’re a good team,” Rangers coach Peter Laviolette said afterward. “They’re a really good team. So, this isn’t going to be control all 60 minutes and move on to the next game. You’re going to have to fight.
