NEW YORK _ The preliminaries are over. Two weeks of games for teams that had clinched postseason berths and featured extras and AHL players, have mercifully concluded. The main event, the Stanley Cup playoffs, starts this week.
To limit injuries and rest players, teams that were locked into seeds have deployed lineups common to preseason games for the past week.
Just check the goaltending duo on the undercard, or regular-season finale at Madison Square Garden on Sunday: The Rangers gave Swedish goalie Magnus Hellberg, who had played a grand total of 51 minutes in three games since the 2013-14 season, his first NHL start because scheduled starter Antti Raanta had a bruised knee. The Penguins netminder, 21-year-old Tristan Jarry, hadn't even appeared in an NHL game.
As it turned out, the Rangers won, 3-2, with the winner coming when Mika Zibanejad fed Jimmy Vesey for a backhand that broke a 2-2 tie at 7:23 of the third period.
With the victory, the Rangers finished the season with 102 points, tied with the 1972-73 team for the seventh most in franchise history.
The game ended a successful campaign for a franchise that had been ousted in the playoffs by the Penguins in five games in the first round last season. With an infusion of younger players, the Blueshirts went 14-5-1 in the first quarter of the season, scoring at a breakneck pace and leading the league in goals per game. Although they were impressive on the road (27-12-2), they faltered at home (21-16-4), raising questions of consistency, especially on defense, that could haunt them in the playoffs.
Coach Alain Vigneault dismissed the stark difference in home and away records, saying that he was not concerned, because in the playoffs, teams face the same opponent night after night. Whether the Rangers can turn the tide against the Montreal Canadiens starting on Wednesday is unclear.
Nothing can be drawn from the mish-mash of lineups in recent games against Washington, Ottawa and on Sunday, when Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin didn't dress for Pittsburgh. The Rangers rested Chris Kreider, Kevin Hayes, Jesper Fast, Brendan Smith and Henrik Lundqvist.
Several players, notably Rangers captain and defenseman Ryan McDonagh, who sat out four games with what was believed to be a lower-body injury, did return. So did Mats Zuccarello, Rick Nash and Nick Holden.
McDonagh, who was voted team MVP by his teammates and was declared 100 percent healthy by Vigneault, showed no signs of rust. In the first period, he skated through the neutral zone and at the top of the left circle, snapped a wrister that beat Jarry stickside that tied the score at 1 at 13:54. Nick Bonino had given the Penguins the lead at 9:16.
With Nash screening in front on a power play, Derek Stepan's floater from the left point went past Jarry at 18:31, and the Rangers had two goals on six shots. Hellberg had made 11 saves, including a denial of Phil Kessel's forehand on a clean breakaway at 5:34. Carter Rowney tied the score at 2 in the second.
