"It doesn't matter," Derek Stepan said when asked specifically about facing the Coyotes, who enter the game with 27 points through 35 games. "Those two points are way too important to be looking anywhere else other than making sure we give ourselves the best chance to win those two points."
Antti Raanta, who made 33 saves Tuesday night against the Ottawa Senators for his ninth win of the year, said records are not important once the puck drops.
"I don't want to start to start to concentrate too much on if some teams are under .500 or not," Raanta told NYRangers.com on Wednesday. "You just have to respect the game and you have to go into every game the same way. Of course you know that teams who have been struggling, you want to keep them in their own end. You don't want to give them any free goals or anything like that.
"We can't go there and say 'they've lost a couple games in a row so they're going to lose this one also,'" Raanta added. "They're [annoyed] and they will come hard tomorrow. It's going to be a tough game. They have lots of young guys there and a couple real good d-men with the puck, so it's going to be a tough game."
Points are crucial for every team in the NHL, but especially so for the Rangers who call the Metropolitan Division home. As of Thursday, the top three point getters in the NHL reside in the Metro, with five in the top nine.
Columbus is on a 13-game winning streak and Pittsburgh is 7-1-2 in its last 10. Washington and Philadelphia both have 44 points and are each 7-2-1 in their last 10.
The margin for error is slim.
"When you look at the standings and [see] what teams are doing around us, I haven't seen that before," Henrik Lundqvist said. "Columbus is on fire, Pittsburgh is really strong, Washington is a really good team. It's going to be a tough race all year. It's impressive to see so many teams doing so well. They set the bar pretty high."
While the Rangers haven't hit the halfway point of the season yet, Stepan said the playoffs are already on their mind.
"We're in a playoff push right now," said Stepan, who has a team-leading 28 points in 37 games. "We don't have any time to not - we're just in a playoff push. We need the two points every single time we step on the ice. That's as simple as it is."
