If a goalie isn’t 6-foot-2 at a minimum, it’s hard to get work in today’s NHL. Ideally, your goalie is closer to 6-foot-4. Wild goalie Devan Dubnyk is the Vezina favorite and he’s only re-enforcing this thought.

He’s 6-foot-6 and having a career season.

If there’s anyone who knows the impact of this trend well, it’s Rangers goalie Antti Raanta. He was living life just well as the backup goalie in Chicago, putting up a .936 save percentage during his final season with the Blackhawks, when Scott Darling came along in 2014. Raanta is (maybe) 6-foot. Darling is a 6-foot-6 redwood.

In describing how it went down, Raanta stretched his arm out to indicate someone of average height.

“When you’re here,” he said, before raising his arm to indicate someone much, much taller.

“And he’s here, and you’re battling against him…”

He doesn’t finish the thought. He doesn’t have to. We know who won that battle in Chicago. Darling has been great for the Blackhawks and will get a shot as a No. 1 goalie next season after his contract expires in Chicago.

Raanta is getting his shot now.

“It’s [been] a win-win situation for both me and Darls,” Raanta said. “It’s been fun. Great place to be, New York.”

Raanta is the immediate beneficiary of Henrik Lundqvist’s hip injury. Lundqvist is out three weeks with a strained hip, which he injured in Florida last week.

On Sunday, Rangers coach Alain Vigneault said that Lundqvist is in a shutdown period of 72 hours to let the hip “calm down.” Then it’s off to rehab.

The bulk of the work in goal for the Rangers now rests on the shoulders of the 6-foot Raanta.

“Antti has been wanting an opportunity to play more,” Vigneault said.

He’s getting it. Raanta has been a bit of a find for the Rangers, with whom he has a .921 save percentage in 48 games since leaving the Blackhawks. With the Lundqvist injury, he’s very likely going to exceed his career-high for games played during a season – equaled last year in New York at 25.

Despite the success, he also knows there are still those who wonder if he’s capable of successfully holding a No. 1 job for a long period of time.

“I think lots of people are still trying to find can I do it or not,” Raanta said. “Every year, I have been playing a couple stretches whether it’s five, six, seven games in a row. I know that I can do it.”

The Rangers currently have a stronghold on the No. 1 wild-card spot, but the players in that dressing room haven’t counted out a push up the Metro standings. They’ve played more games than anyone in the division but still believe they can catch the Capitals, Penguins or Blue Jackets in front of them. Whether they pull it off or not may hinge on how successful Raanta is in goal. That’s one thing on the line in the next few weeks.

The other is his future as a possible NHL starter.

Two Vegas scouts were among those in attendance at Joe Louis Arena on Sunday, including Vegas assistant GM Kelly McCrimmon. The Rangers depth at all positions makes them a team of interest for the Golden Knights, but Raanta certainly has to be on the watch list, with one year left on his contract and Lundqvist the goalie to be protected in New York for the expansion draft.

Not that any of that is on Raanta’s mind right now.

“You just have to be in the moment,” he said. “You can’t go too much thinking what everybody else is thinking -- is someone thinking I’m good enough?”

These next few weeks may help answer that question.

Nine more takeaways from the weekend of NHL action:

<!--photo2. Lundqvist is slightly bigger than Raanta, listed at 6-foot-1, and has provided the Finnish goalie with a similarly sized role model in which to study the game during his time with the Rangers.

“He’s always challenging the shooter,” Raanta said of Lundqvist. “He’s not the traditional butterfly goalie. He’s never down and away. He’s always challenging, being big. That was great for me. He’s not the biggest guy in the league. He’s pretty much the same height as me.”

3. The most important part of getting an opportunity for consistent playing time for a backup goalie is that it takes the question of playing time right out of the equation. Raanta said he can now just show up and expect to play, whereas as the backup, you can do too much to try and get noticed.

“Sometimes when you’re not playing too much, you go to the practice, you think a little too much; you try a little too much,” Raanta said. “When you get games in a short period of time, you forget the thinking thing and just go there and have fun. Especially when you win, it’s much more fun. You just try to do your thing.”

4. Sunday marked the return to Joe Louis Arena for Rangers defenseman Brendan Smith, who is getting regular minutes in the Rangers' top four since being acquired at the trade deadline from the Red Wings. He conceded that there has been a bit of an adjustment period, but he’s starting to settle in.

The comfort level is increasing.

“A lot more now than my first few games,” he said when we chatted after the game. “I found it tough to get used to the system and everything. Right now, I have a pretty good feel with [Nick Holden]. I think we’re playing pretty well.”

5. One of the bigger adjustments for Smith came on the penalty kill. The Rangers play it more aggressively than the Red Wings, and it shows in the statistics. The Rangers are second in the league with nine short-handed goals. The Red Wings are No. 28 with just two.

“They almost try to create offense on the PK, as you notice,” Smith said. He’s still getting used to it and said that he can be a little bit more aggressive and shade on the strong side.

Once he gets completely comfortable, that’s an area the Rangers expect Smith to be a real contributor.

“He’s obviously a good penalty killer who should help us down the road,” Vigneault said. “We really like the enthusiasm he’s bringing, the bite he’s bringing to our group.”

6. The Arizona Republic’s Sarah McLellan had a good piece that examined the other side of the trade deadline -- the hole a deadline deal creates. In this case, it was the hole created by the trade of center Martin Hanzal to the Wild. The Coyotes now have the unenviable task of trying to find a legitimate No. 1 center in a draft that may not have one and a free agent class thin at that position.

The Coyotes are a good example that a successful rebuild needs a lot of ingredients, but two important ones are timing and luck, something Arizona hasn’t necessarily received.

7. Last year at the trade deadline, the Sharks added James Reimer as insurance behind starting goalie Martin Jones. This year, GM Doug Wilson showed faith in 27-year-old backup Aaron Dell in letting the current depth chart ride. Dell was strong again on Sunday, stopping 29 of 30 shots against the Stars to earn his fourth consecutive win.

In six games since the All-Star break, Dell is 4-1-1 with a .948 save percentage. With another year on his contract worth $625,000 per season, he’s turning out to be one of the league’s best values.

8. In the box score, Derek Stepan’s third-period goal that opened the Rangers lead over Detroit to three goals looked insignificant. It was anything but for Stepan, who hadn’t scored a goal since January 17, a span of 23 games.

Often, it’s not until after a goal-scoring drought is snapped that you truly get an appreciation for the toll it took on the player going through it.

“It was tough,” Stepan said after the game. “It was not an easy thing to go through. Guys do it; you go through it in your career. You just have to find a way to keep that mindset, ‘this is just the way it is right now.’”

9. The challenge is focusing on the process over the result. In that long span of games without a goal, Stepan estimated that there were only four or five games in which he didn’t like how he played.

“The rest I felt pretty good about it,” he said. “My last five games, I felt much better.”

He was getting chances, including Thursday’s game against the Hurricanes in which he finished with 10 shots on goal. That helped him stay positive.

"I don’t think I’ve ever come close to 10 in my career,” he said.

10. Still, the long stretch without scoring wasn’t easy for Stepan. It got serious enough that he called former teammate Martin St. Louis before the Rangers trip to Florida for advice. St. Louis went 14 games without a goal after being traded from the Lightning to the Rangers in 2014.

“He said it felt like a year,” Stepan said.

The focus of the call was on process, with the expectation that the goals would come if Stepan was playing the right way.

“When he was here, we talked a lot of hockey. We were hockey nerds,” Stepan said. “It was good to lean on him.”