BOSTON — At least Brendan Smith was able to get well acquainted with what life is like in the defensive zone in the first 20 minutes of his Rangers career — considering that that’s where essentially the entire first period of Thursday’s game was played.
“It was like a whirlwind,” Smith, acquired from Detroit on Tuesday, said after the 2-1 victory over the Bruins, in which he played 20:51, primarily paired with Ryan McDonagh. “It’s really tough to learn a system in a couple of days, there’s different lingo I tried to pick up on, so I just tried to keep it as simple as I could.