Lundqvist and kid D-men shut down Canucks

After the Rangers traded 32-year-old Michal Rozsival to the Phoenix Coyotes on Monday, 27-year-old Steve Eminger became the elder statesman on the blue line. All-Star Marc Staal, 24, and Dan Girardi, 26, are the team's undisputed top D-pair. It gets younger from there, with Matt Gilroy, 26, Michael Sauer, 23, and 21-year-old Ryan McDonagh and his four games of NHL experience rounding out the corps.

"We're pretty young. We're bugging Emmy now. He's the oldest guy here. He's a big wily veteran," Staal said. "We're a confident group. I think we're all going to learn each day and keep getting better and just try to do our best job to defend the right way."

They were supposed to be overmatched against the deep, high-powered Canucks. Instead, they did an excellent job of limiting the quality chances of a team that was 14-0-3 heading into the game.

The Canucks' top line of Daniel and Henrik Sedin and Alex Burrows were held to a combined six shots. They were up against the Rangers' line of Brian Boyle, Ruslan Fedotenko and Brandon Prust all night, but the defensive pair in their face was always Staal and Girardi.

"It's a group that continues to improve," Tortorella said. "All of them contributed. Danny and Marc get a lot of the credit because they're the top line, but they have a pretty good unit right on through their team. So all our guys had to play against pretty good players."

McDonagh was understandably the defenseman who saw the least action against the Canucks -- just 11:44 of ice time -- but Tortorella was happy with what he saw.

"I'm watching McDonagh very closely, just to see what his mindset is in a game like this," Tortorella said. "Especially for a young guy like that, I wanted to see how he played. He had the right type of strut, as far as closing the neutral zone off."

The shutout came with two rewards -- one for the fans and one for the team.

Lundqvist threw his stick into the stands after he took his twirl at center ice for being named first star, saying the raucous crowd of 18,200 earned the reward. He will also do what he does after every shutout -- raffle off a bottle of wine to one of his teammates who helped make the shutout possible.

It's a potentially pretty nice reward for a group of guys who haven't been legally able to purchase alcohol for all that long.

"They're playing well. They're playing confident," Lundqvist said. "They play with a lot of speed. They're good skaters. It helps the way they skate and move the puck. I think everybody looks confident out there."

There will likely be some bumps along the road with such a young group. But if they continue to play like they did Tuesday, perhaps shutouts like this one will be even more ho-hum as time passes.

The reward, however, will never cease to be satisfying.

"I guess we get a few more bottles of wine," Staal said. "I'm pretty happy about that."

Follow Dave Lozo on Twitter: @DaveLozo