NEW YORK – Leave it to the New Jersey Devils to cure the Ranger woes.

With the hottest team in hockey – winners of nine straight - coming into the Garden on Sunday, the Blueshirts knew they had to get back to their defensive system to win the game.

And after holding serve, at 0-0, for three straight periods, Brendan Shanahan was able to finally score 30 seconds into overtime to give the Rangers the win.

“Every time we have done this over the last few years, we slipped on the banana peel and we recovered,” said coach Tom Renney. “The bottom line is the guys in this organization care. And they are willing to sacrifice and get this game back to a simple format that allows for success.”

Although Shanahan’s one timer past Marty Brodeur showed up in the boxscore, the rest of the Rangers did so many other little things that contributed to the win.

Like Marty Straka, who took three shots from Karel Rachunek off his body to earn him a standing ovation from the Garden crowd. And the rest of the Rangers that shut down the Devils to hold them to 17 shots for the game.

“I knew they'd go to my side because I didn't have a stick,” Straka said. “So I just tried to line up with the guy and block the shot.”

“There wasn't a dry eye in the building. I was like, 'Marty, you touched me here, and you touched me here,'” said Shanahan, who pointed to his head and and his heart.

It was that effort, which earned Henrik Lundqvist the shutout - his 12th of his career – and although the shots were only 17, he made some tough saves in the first, when the Devils only had four shots, including a breakaway by John Madden.

“I was thinking, 'Get pumped up for this game,' and it's not hard to get that feeling going out there to play against the Devils and play against Marty," Lundqvist said “After the first period I felt like I was back.”

And it felt like the Rangers were back after getting outscored 14-4 over the three-game losing streak. In this game, they felt like they were in control and calm, something that wasn’t evident this past week.

“I was really proud of the way we responded," Shanahan said. “Coming into a situation like this game, where we had lost three in a row, I think we were all happy that it was the Devils coming in because we knew the arena was going to have a lot of atmosphere. And they always present a big challenge to us, especially this time, with them being on a nine-game winning streak.”

But it was that streak that gave the Rangers enough to break out of their slump.

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