Stepan scored twice and assisted on Chris Kreider's go-ahead third period score as the Rangers climbed out of an early 2-0 hole to beat a Lightning team that had won Game Seven of the 2015 Eastern Conference Final over the Blueshirts in their most recent visit to The Garden last spring.
"They came out flying and we hard a hard time getting our game going," explained goaltender Henrik Lundqvist, who was a difference maker with 39 saves. "I knew it was going to turn, however, so it was important not to get hurt too bad. As long as it was a two-goal game, we were in it. They definitely had their push in the first and then we started to take control of the game."
New York won for the second consecutive night, following up Monday's 4-2 victory in Columbus
that clinched the Rangers a sixth straight playoff berth. The Blueshirts now have 99 points on the season and remain in third place in the Metropolitan Division, three points behind the Pittsburgh Penguins who also rallied to win on Tuesday night.
"The last few games are really big for us because we'd like to have home ice in the playoffs, that's a pretty big advantage," stated Kreider.
Stepan, who now has six goals in his last seven games and 14 points in his last eight contests, got New York on the board with a power play goal late in the second period, and then tied things up by sniping a slap shot from the right circle off the rush past Lightning goalie Andrei Vasilievskiy 2:33 into the third period. The goal was Stepan's 22nd of the season, establishing a new single-season high for him.
Two minutes later Marc Staal sprung Kreider on a breakaway and Kreider buried his second goal in as many nights and fifth in the past six games to give New York its first lead, 3-2, at the 4:46 mark of the third period. Stepan picked up the secondary assist on Kreider's tally.
"I think me and Chris have kind of found our grooves together, and it's been a big part of both of our success," offered Stepan, who logged more than 21 minutes of ice time Tuesday.
The Rangers had been badly outplayed in the opening period, continuing a fairly disturbing recent trend of poor starts. New York was outshot 21-6 and out-attempted 33-11 as Tampa Bay dominated the action and scored the game's first two goals.
However some solid goaltending from Lundqvist and strong work on the penalty kill kept the Rangers within striking distance; and late in the second period a power play goal by Stepan cut the Blueshirts' deficit to one goal, 2-1.
Stepan wired a left-wing slap shot through a Kreider screen at 16:55 of the middle stanza to extend his point-scoring streak to four games and his goal-scoring streak to three. Mats Zuccarello--who assisted on the goal along with Keith Yandle--established a new career-high by registering his 60th point of the season. He would later assist on Stepan's second goal, as well.
That goal capped a far better middle twenty minutes for the Rangers, who outshot the Lightning 13-8 in the second and established far better zone time in Tampa's end of the ice. However it didn't quite match what the Lightning did early in the first period when they scored twice within the opening 6:07 of game action.
Defenseman Andrej Sustr scored off a broken play just 2:42 into the game, and an Ondrej Palat power play shot nicked former Ranger Brian Boyle on its way into the net at 6:07 to put the Rangers in a very early 2-0 hole. At that point New York was already being outshot by a 9-2 margin and things would not get much better in the period as the Lightning were awarded two more power plays, including a five-minute major called against Rangers forward Tanner Glass at 15:57.
Faced with five minutes of penalty killing time after Glass received an interference major and game misconduct for his hit on Tampa's Vladislav Namestnikov at center ice, the Rangers rose to the challenge and killed off the penalty which bridged the first and second periods. New York followed by killing off penalties to Derick Brassard and Yandle in the first half of the second period, and steadily gained momentum as time elapsed in the period.
"I think we did a good job in the first period of killing that five-minute major, and we built some momentum off it," explained Stepan. "That's something your special teams need to do for you."
The Rangers ended the night by killing off five of Tampa Bay's six power play opportunities.
A simply brilliant diving save by Lundqvist to rob a wide-open power play scoring chance for Tyler Johnson highlighted a kill midway through the period; and five minutes later Stepan got the Rangers on the scoreboard with a power play goal of his own.
"He was our best player tonight, without a doubt," Stepan said of Lundqvist. "We come out of the first period down only 2-0 because of him and then he made some big-time saves the rest of the game."
Added head coach Alain Vigneault, "We were fortunate Hank was on top of his game."
Before the game the team announced that its captain Ryan McDonagh would not play in any of the final three regular season games due to an upper body injury suffered Monday night in Columbus.
Then late in the third period another top-four defenseman went down when Dan Girardi was checked awkwardly into the boards behind the Rangers net by former teammate Brian Boyle. Girardi remained down on the ice for an extended time as Boyle was escorted to the tunnel by an official, assessed a five-minute boarding major and a game misconduct penalty at 18:52.
Girardi eventually was led to the dressing room and there was no immediate word after the game as to his condition, other than he was being evaluated by the team's medical personnel.
"It's not good, definitely not at this time of the year," stated Lundqvist. "I really hope that it's not too serious, but we just have to wait and see. He's a guy who plays hard and doesn't go down unless it's really painful, so I'm just going to hope for the best here. He's a big part of this team."
Rookies Brady Skjei and Dylan McIlrath played on the Rangers blue line Tuesday--with McDonagh out injured and Dan Boyle being given a night off. Skjei logged 16:22 worth of ice time after being recalled from Hartford earlier in the day and was credited with two hits, two blocked shots, and four attempted shots. McIlrath, who absolutely leveled Craig Paquette with a thunderous second-period hit, was a +2, credited with two hits over 12:31 and received a first-period hooking minor penalty.
Still just two points ahead of the fourth-place Islanders, who own a game in hand and who also won on Tuesday, the Rangers host their arch-rivals Thursday night at MSG in the Blueshirts next-to-last game of the regular season.
"Obviously it's always intense, a lot of fun those games, and this time of the year it's going to be no different," Marc Staal said of facing the Islanders in game No. 81 with so much on the line. "The place is going to be rocking and it's going to be a good playoff atmosphere type test for us at the end of the season. It'll be fun."
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