Rangers will need Alexis Lafreniere’s Game 4 self for remainder of postseason

It was indeed the most compelling performance of Alexis Lafreniere’s career and there’s not even a close second. This was superstar stuff from No. 13 on Saturday night in Raleigh, N.C.

This was first-overall stuff that not even a Game 4 defeat that prevented a second-round sweep of the Hurricanes could camouflage, it was that much of a dominant showing. There was no one close to him.

Lafreniere competed, he danced, he played with finesse, he played with snarl. He went to the net. He won the 50-50’s. He shot the puck. He drove the net. He lifted the Rangers into a 3-3 tie early in the third period with a Gretzky-esque bank shot off the goaltender from below the goal line. He sparred with Sebastian Aho. On a night when linemates Artemi Panarin and Vincent Trocheck had their weakest games of the tournament, Lafreniere was fierce.

“I thought he could have had three or four goals,” head coach Peter Laviolette said of the winger who has scored four goals in the last three games. “There were things we could have done to tighten up, but we also had looks and it seemed like it was on his stick and you knew it was coming.

“I bumped him on the bench, saying, ‘It’s coming.’ And so it’s nice to see him continue to take steps in the playoffs and continue to be a difference-maker and I thought he was [in Game 4]. I don’t think he was rewarded offensively the way he maybe should have been after [creating so many chances.]”

This is about now, of course. It is about Monday’s potential clincher at the Garden. It is about navigating the course from seven victories to the 16 required to lift the Cup. The Rangers will have to be far sharper to close it out than they were in Saturday’s 4-3 defeat. Essentially every one of their marquee players needs to better. They know that.