Will The Rangers' Thrilling Victory Over the Stars Push Them to Great Heights?

Down 2-1 to the Dallas Stars at Madison Square Garden with less than three minutes to go in the game on Tuesday night, December 2, it looked like the New York Rangers were headed for another loss on home ice.

Despite both out-chancing and outshooting their opponents, it looked like the Blueshirts were going to let the game slip away. For them, it would have been same stuff, different day.

Rangers' forward Will Cuylle did not let that happen. He tied the game with 2:13 to go in the third period to help send the game to overtime, where defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov would score to give the Rangers a thrilling 3-2 victory.

This could have easily gone the other way for the Blueshirts. They have lost 2-1 or 3-1 and be on a two game losing streak heading into their tilt in Ottawa against the Ottawa Senators on Thursday night.

Instead, the team heads into Thursday night's game on a high and looking to do what they have done well so far this season - win on the road. As of this writing (Wednesday, December 3), the Rangers have the league's best road record as they are 11-4-1.

There are a few reasons why the Rangers could use their big victory over the Stars as a starting off point to playing winning hockey on a consistent basis. For starters, they fired lots of pucks on net in their victory.

The Rangers outshot the Stars 41-26 in the game and also had a 73-52 advantage in shot attempts. They had 18 shots in the third period thanks to a four minute power play they had and managed two shots in the overtime.

In this game, the team was clearly not afraid to shoot the puck. They made Stars' goaltender Casey DeSmith battle for pucks by creating traffic in front and firing pucks at him from all over the ice.

The Blueshirts also showed that they can bear down and play a full 60 minutes. Yes, the game seemed sluggish at times, but the Rangers never gave up and did what they could to put pressure on the Stars all night long.

After the game, Cuylle echoed those sentiments to reporters.

"It's good to bounce back, especially on home ice in front of our fans," Cuylle said. "We're proud of the way we played today and just stuck with it. I felt like it was a full 60 minutes, or I guess 61 or whatever. It's good to get back in the win column, especially at home."

Something else the Rangers can draw from is the fact that they did not get down after the Stars took a 2-1 lead in the third period. More often than not over these last two seasons, the Rangers have shown that they can be fragile when things do not go their way.

That was not the case in their win over the Stars. Rangers' head coach Mike Sullivan told reporters after the game that he liked the way his team responded in a positive way after the Stars took the lead.

"I really liked the response after we got scored against," Rangers coach Mike Sullivan said. "We didn't sink. You get the feeling behind the bench. You can tell when those types of moments affect a team either in a negative way or the opposite. You can feel it on the bench and the feeling I got tonight was that the response was the right one, to answer, just drop the puck and play and let's keep going at these guys, try to dig in here and find a way to get that tying goal. I give the players a lot of credit."

Lastly, the team's win over the Stars should show both them and their fans that when they play the game the right way, they can compete with anyone. Gavrikov spoke with reporters after the game about how they need to play that way every chance they get.

"We showed how we can play, raise the bar," Gavrikov said. "So we've got to keep the standard like that and play like that every night."

If the Rangers can carry this kind of effort into their next three games against the Senators, Colorado Avalanche, and Vegas Golden Knights, there is no reason why they cannot make it four straight wins and put themselves in the thick of things in both the Metropolitan Division and Eastern Conference.