COMMENTARY : Ranger Faithful Watch Team’s Traditional Fall

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — All of these things were a possibility the New York Rangers said they’d considered. They were unspeakable; they were possible. They’ve been possible since 1940.

The New Jersey Devils were tough on them all season. The long layoff for the strike could be an equalizer. The Devils played good defense and -- who could know? -- maybe they’d have a goaltender who could stand on his head and speak Latin.

And now the Rangers are in trouble. They aren’t terminal, but they are serious. All those probability curves have intersected in the part of New Jersey that looks like the back of an old radio, on the industrialized swamp that blows abused air toward New York.

“We played pretty well, as well as we can play,” Rangers Coach Roger Neilson said, trying to make it come out positive. His point was if they keep playing that well, sooner or later they’ll break through. The harsh interpretation asks, if that’s the best they can play, when do they win?

The Devils beat the Rangers, 3-1, Thursday night and took a 2-games-to-1 lead in the first playoff series of the year the Rangers were going to break the jinx. There isn’t much later left for the best Rangers team ever.

The Rangers said what they had to say about having come to New Jersey hoping to split two games and there’s still one left -- win it and the series is tied. They remember they left a light burning at the end of the tunnel. Of course, they can pull it out; they are the best team in the National Hockey League and they’re behind 2-1. They can make their march to the Stanley Cup all that much more dramatic.

What they have done is let the Devils know they can win it. And Chris Terreri has shown the Rangers their mortality. “He makes big saves on everything he sees -- and some he doesn’t see,” Rangers defenseman Brian Leetch said as if writing an epitaph.

For 50 seconds in the first period the Rangers experienced the rare delight of having a two-man advantage. Get a goal and still have a 5-on-4 edge. Games and championships turn on moments like that. They got only frustration.

Late in the third period Mark Messier, the roughest, toughest hockey machine the Rangers have ever had, crossed paths in the corner with Terreri and hooked him around the neck with his stick as in an old burlesque routine, taking the offending comedian off the stage. “It was an accident,” Messier said.

Terreri responded by slashing his heavy goalie’s stick at Messier’s legs the way Bill Smith used his stick as a broadsword in the years he was snuffing out fires for the Islanders. “I pushed him back,” Terreri said. “It’s just part of playoff hockey.”

It’s the frustration of the NHL’s best team being stopped by a team that has never accomplished anything in its history. What the Devils did Thursday night was fill the building. The announced crowd was 19,040 -- nineteen forty, get it.

Again, Messier had to put up with the shadowing of Claude Lemieux and again Messier scored a goal. He has three goals in three games. Don’t blame him. Where were the others?

It was just that Messier revealed that it was bugging him, and undoubtedly the others, too. “It must be,” Lemieux said. “Every team that goes down that had such a good record gets upset.”

Of course, Messier’s high stick was an accident. “Probably like that the last game, too,” Lemieux said. Ah, yes, Messier’s stick left an imprint on Lemieux’s midsection in the second game, but the officials didn’t see it.

Perhaps the Rangers didn’t see the banner strung high in Meadowlands Arena linking “Sure things in life: death, taxes, Rangers choke in playoffs.” The Rangers have been living with this since before they were born.

And they were playing a tough team. The Rangers’ record when they held an opponent to three goals or fewer this season was a stunning 42-1-3. That means the Rangers could give up three goals and win with assurance. Except the Devils’ defense wouldn’t permit it.

Of course it was getting to the Rangers. Neilson broke the combination that had worked so well all season to play Messier on double shifts. “To get him more ice time, to get away from the matchup and maybe tire those lines,” Neilson said.

They put 35 shots on Terreri and he stopped 34. In that 50-second span the ice was blue with Rangers -- Leetch, James Patrick, Mike Gartner, Tim Kerr and-or Tony Amonte and Messier.

“I thought it could be worse, we could be down a goal and see that,” said Lemieux, who doesn’t kill penalties. And so Messier was free of him for that time. The Devils were leading 2-1, and so it stayed. “We had a million chances,” Neilson said. “That’s not a problem. We had all kinds of chances.”

But in the show of bravado in the aftermath, the Rangers’ dressing room was sparse. Messier stood up for the offense. Gartner, who scored the winning goal in the first game, was conspicuously absent with the rest. Messier denied the game was won and lost in those 50 seconds.

Perhaps. But Terreri took heart from it. “It’s something a team builds on,” he said. “You try to build on anything to get momentum going. The longer we can frustrate them, the better.”

And Lemieux recalled his time playing for the Canadiens, of how Patrick Roy had once stopped 50 shots. “A hot goaltender,” he said.

Yes, the Rangers were laying down this hail of rubber and Terreri was standing on his head.

Like the piano, when he wasn’t upright he was grand. “Some people didn’t think we’d be able to play with them,” he said. “I think we changed their minds.”

They haven’t beat the Rangers yet. Like the Jersey Turnpike, they have taken their toll.