Rangers finally muck it up to gut out win over Panthers

1 month ago 24

Head manager Gerard Gallant had called for the Rangers to tighten things up defensively, but defence was inadvertently the superior absorption Monday nighttime against the Panthers.

It had to beryllium considering however Florida had them connected their heels for an extended play of clip successful each period, but the Blueshirts inactive managed to travel distant with a 6-2 triumph contempt being outplayed and outshot for astir of the night.

The enactment changes made successful the sanction of sparking the discourtesy whitethorn not person had the nonstop desired effect, though they prompted a mates of greasy goals, which the Rangers haven’t produced astir capable of this season. They created havoc successful beforehand of the net, crashed the soiled areas of the crystal and recovered ways to enactment the puck distant erstwhile the beauteous options weren’t there.

That has been missing from the Rangers’ crippled lately, but it was the lone mode they were going to nonstop the Panthers backmost to Florida with their tails betwixt their legs. Igor Shesterkin’s 33-save show surely helped, arsenic well.

Adam Fox led the Rangers with 3 points, a extremity and 2 assists, for his 11th multi-point crippled of the season. Mika Zibanejad besides scored twice, the 250th and 251st goals of his NHL career, portion Alexis Lafreniere scored his archetypal extremity successful 17 games connected 1 of those work-for-it sequences to marque it a 4-1 crippled successful the 3rd period.

The Panthers, who mislaid Sam Bennett astatine the extremity of the 2nd period, erstwhile his skate got tangled up with Filip Chytil and helium fell into the boards awkwardly, pulled goalie Alex Lyons with implicit 9 minutes remaining successful regularisation to effort and spark a rally. The six-on-five borderline worked once, and Aleksander Barkov made it hap aft helium flipped the puck implicit Shesterkin to chopped the location team’s pb to 3 goals.

Gallant was capable to rotation 3 lines comparatively arsenic successful this one. The Jimmy Vesey-Vincent Trocheck-Barclay Goodrow alignment seemed to travel astir arsenic a effect of Gallant wanting to reunite Artemi Panarin with Zibanejad and Chris Kreider, arsenic good arsenic the Kid Line, but it was the portion that notched the Rangers’ archetypal soiled extremity of the nighttime successful the 2nd period.

The Rangers created immoderate postulation successful beforehand of the Panthers nett and Vesey jammed the puck location for the 3-1 people astatine 15:03.

Despite putting lone 1 changeable connected nett done 14:33 of the archetypal period, which Fox scored connected aft settling a bouncing walk from Panarin, the Rangers inactive had a 2-1 borderline implicit the Panthers heading into the archetypal intermission. Both clubs scored connected the powerfulness play, with the Panthers taking vantage of the Rangers getting caught with excessively galore men connected the crystal conscionable nether six minutes into the game.

The Rangers’ apical power-play aboriginal scored its archetypal extremity since Jan. 3 aft Zibanejad ripped a one-timer from his saccharine spot successful the near faceoff circle.