The NHL's hottest team is quietly silencing many of the critics who believed huge regression was in the cards this season. The New York Rangers went to the Stanley Cup finals last spring, but offseason losses coupled with the widely held belief that last spring's run was an overachievement led to a popular notion that the Blueshirts would be in trouble this season. There certainly were signs early on that not all was right, but the team's current eight-game winning streak has the Rangers racing back up the standings at 19-10-4. "I think there are a lot of things that have all added up to help us have success," Ranger center Derek Stepan told ESPN.com Sunday evening from Dallas, where the Blueshirts play Monday night. "We're starting to build some chemistry with some lines. As five-man units, I think we've done a better job of defending, especially against other teams' top lines. And most importantly, I think our goaltending has been fantastic through this stretch.'' It's not the team many had expected before the season. "At the beginning of the year, even though they went to Cup finals last year, I really didn't have them pegged as a playoff team, I didn't view them as an elite team,'' a rival scout from an Eastern Conference team told ESPN.com Monday. "But I can say now I might have been wrong about that. They're becoming an elite team I think. [Rick] Nash is a legitimate horse again, which has made a big difference. They've got nice depth. And the goalie is great again.'' Added a Western Conference team executive who recently saw the Rangers play live: "First they have the guy in the net who just stabilizes them. Next, their top guys [Nash, Stepan, McDonagh] are playing like top players, which allows the remainder of their guys to slot in underneath. Blue-line is good and is now healthy.'' All that talk about goalie Henrik Lundqvist maybe having seen better days certainly looks to have been premature. King Henrik is doing his thing again, going 7-1-0 with a 1.97 goals-against average and .922 save percentage in the month of December. "It's incredible the stuff he does not just year after year but night in and night out," Stepan said. "Even against Jersey [on Saturday], he made some huge saves for us that helped us win the game.'' As is often the case in the NHL these days, half the battle is just being healthy. With top-four blueliners Ryan McDonagh and Dan Boyle each missing long chunks of time to injury earlier in the season, it had the predictable negative impact on the team. Having both healthy is gigantic, evidenced by the Rangers 10-1-0 this season when both blueliners are in the lineup at the same time. "Definitely huge,'' Stepan said. "Ryan's a guy that's going to eat up huge minutes for us and play big-time minutes against big-time players. To have him back in the lineup and playing on all cylinders is going to help us tremendously. "Boyler is another guy just getting him back in the lineup has helped our depth so much on the back end. And he wants to create as much offense as possible. Even on plays where he doesn't pick up points himself, he creates a lot of chaos in the offensive zone which allows us to score goals. To get both those guys back was a huge boost for us.'' Where the Rangers still need to improve overall is in the analytics department, where the club is lower than it would like in terms of puck possession numbers. Perhaps the most surprising facet of this Rangers team right now, though, is that they're scoring goals like nobody's business (fifth in the NHL at 2.97 goals per game), something most would not have predicted that before the season. Nash, playing a line with Derick Brassard and Mats Zuccarello, has been reborn this season and is leading the Blueshirts with 36 points (23-13). But Stepan's unit with Martin St. Louis and Chris Kreider has also been very effective lately. "The biggest thing is the amount of space that Marty can create for me and Chris. It's really hard to explain -- he's so good at what he does," Stepan said when asked about his line's success. "And to be able to do it year in and year out like he has been, it's really incredible. I think he's the biggest part of our line. He's able to see things so much and we're able to communicate about it. I'm just trying to soak up as much as I can from him, because he is such a brilliant hockey mind. "As for Chris, he's a workhorse, he obviously wants to score more goals but he's been doing a lot things for us like skating down pucks and hanging onto it, and using his big body. We've just kind of gelled together nicely. The best way to get a line going is to figure out how to gel with your linemates and we've done a good job of that so far.'' Head coach Alain Vigneault has been able to roll four lines of late, which is important, but I suspect the Rangers would like to add a piece or two to help their bottom-six forward group before the March 2 trade deadline. I think that's where the Rangers will focus their trade energy, barring any serious injuries. In the meantime, they look refreshed and ready to contend in the East. Whatever playoff hangover might have existed after a short summer from last June's trip to the Cup finals seems to be behind them. "I think the organization did a really good job of getting everyone excited to get back here,'' Stepan said of battling the so-called hangover. "The coaching staff, the leadership group with the players, we've done a really good job of being really eager to be back at the rink, which has really helped us getting our feet underneath us quicker.''
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