NJD vs NYR

Three nights before, Rangers defenceman Marc Staal didn't know what hit him. It turned out to be John Madden's hopeful fling. And after it struck Staal's skate and ricocheted through Henrik Lundqvist's pads 6:01 into overtime, the Devils had the victory they needed to climb back into this series.

Tonight at Madison Square Garden, Staal put New Jersey back on the verge of extinction. Staal skated onto a Martin Straka pass and blasted a slapshot past Martin Brodeur with 3:13 left in regulation for the tiebreaking goal in the Rangers' 5-3 victory.

And to hear Rangers captain Jaromir Jagr tell it, the ridiculously-poised Staal might not even know what he hit the Devils with.

"He didn't know he scored for them the other night and he probably doesn't even know he scored tonight," Jagr joked. "He's like a young Patrick Roy - they beat him for five or six goals one night and he comes back and shuts them out the next."

Staal also used his long reach to poke a puck away from a rushing Zach Parise early in the second period, triggering the counterattack two-on-one that ended with a Straka goal.

"It felt really good," Staal said of his first NHL playoff goal. "Obviously, the goal last game went off my skate and in and that wasn't a good feeling at all, silencing 20,000 people. This makes it all better."

Having taken a 3-games-to-1 lead in the series, the Rangers get their first of three chances to close out the Devils Friday night in Newark. The Rangers swept the series-opening pair of games there. But the Devils were nothing if not resilient in Games 3 and 4. They erased three one-goal deficits tonight.

"They are never going to quit," Rangers center Chris Drury said. "They have a lot of character and a lot of Stanley Cups over there and we know that."