While the New York Rangers didn’t exactly have timing on their side (Playing a game on the same night as Superbowl 42) they had everything else tonight. They defeated the Montreal Canadiens 5-3, thanks to goals coming from Chris Gomez and Chris Drury. With the victory, the Rangers are 27-22, and 4th place in the Atlantic Division. The Rangers have now won three straight games, and are building momentum, according to Rangers coach Tom Renney.

“This was a huge character win,” Rangers coach Tom Renney said. “If anything punctuates our last three games, this is it. If anything punctuates the character of our team, this is it, but every time we go to the rink moving forward it’s going to check our character and we have to make sure that we use this as a reference point. It’s our job to make sure this is a turning point in our season. It’s that simple.”

In the first period, the Canadiens jumped out to a commanding 2-0 lead because of goals from Andrei Markov and Alexei Kovalev. Things didn’t improve in the 2nd period, when Sergei Kostitsyn scored a goal for the Habs 5 minutes and 40 seconds into the period. However, on a power play Chris Drury and Martin Straka assisted Michal Rozsival for the Rangers first goal. From there, Brandon Dubinsky, Scott Gomez, Chris Drury and Martin Straka scored goals for the Rangers. All 5 goals were scored against Canadiens goalie Cristobal Huet, who is now 19-8-6 on the season, and has a 2.3 Goals Against Average percentage, which is below average.

“Hopefully, it (The win) says a lot,” First Star Chris Drury said. “Hopefully, we grab on to this and it carries us to some more wins down the stretch here because that was definitely a big win for us, on the road and down by three.”