"This was a throwback game for the Rangers, all right, a throwback to the first three months of the season when the club's grit and effort resulted in, well, positive results.

This was one that might have demoralized clubs with lesser resolve and a weaker fabric, for after blowing a 2-1 lead after two periods by allowing a pair of goals to the Hurricanes in the first 6:10 of the third, the Rangers appeared on the precipice of collapse.

Yet they did not fall over the edge, did not fall off the cliff. Rather, these Black-and-Blueshirts gathered themselves, tied the game with 1:50 remaining on a goal by the revived Wojtek Wolski, and then won it in a 1-0 shootout on a Wolski goal in the bottom of the third.

"It's all about how you respond," said Michael Sauer, who went hard to the net to create confusion on the play where Wolski's left-circle shot glanced in off defenseman Jay Harrison, after the 4-3 victory. "We have a relentless team and believe we can do it no matter the situation.

"We didn't want to be in the spot where we were behind, but we came together, we pushed and we made something happen."

The victory, only the club's third in the past 11 games (3-7-1), extended the seventh-place team's lead to three points over the eighth-place Hurricanes, who hold one game in hand. The Rangers, with 20 games to go, lead the ninth-place Sabres by eight points, with Buffalo holding four games in hand.

Even as the club waits for results from yesterday's examination of the concussed Marian Gaborik, Marc Staal left the game for good 6:40 into the third with a knee injury he suffered on the first shift. The injury thus was not related to the mean, shoulder-to-shoulder hit from his older brother Eric that knocked the defenseman to the ice with 50 seconds to go in the second."