FINAL SCORE: New York Rangers – 2 Carolina Hurricanes – 1
FIRST PERIOD: In what seemed to be a must win game for the Rangers, they came out skating hard and fast against a much weaker Hurricanes squad. The first power play of the game came at 4:28 of the period when Tim Gleason took a penalty and sent the Rangers to the power play. The Hurricanes killed it off, as they would SIX others in this game and the play continued. Chris Kreider and Nathan Gerbe both took penalties in the period that resulted in nothing for either team. After a hot start the Rangers began to regress a little bit and play pretty timid against an extremely weak hockey team. This period was pretty slow but it ended and the Rangers found themselves down 13-8 in shots. Henrik Lundqvist and Anton Khudobin held off all the shots they faced.
SECOND PERIOD: This period saw slightly better play by the Rangers but also better by the Hurricanes. Both teams skated hard and the Rangers still looked like they didn’t really have any confidence with the puck. At 3:51 Jay Harrison took a penalty and the Rangers struggled to even get the power play settled in to the Hurricanes zone. Five minutes later Brett Bellemore took a penalty and the most interesting thing about both of those penalties is that they were drawn by Anthony Duclair, who’s been having a heck of a start to his NHL career; the way Duclair skates with the puck and forces players to notice his presence and often make mistakes trying to defend him. Captain Ryan McDonagh took a penalty during the period that the Rangers managed to fight off. At 16:53 of the period Chris Terry shot a puck that took a weird flutter in the air and off of Lundqvist’s stick and into the net to give the Hurricanes a lead. The period came to an end and the Rangers out-shot the Hurricanes 12-5 in the period and 20-18 for the game but were down 1-0.
THIRD PERIOD: In only the fifth game of the season, this period seemed monumentally important, if the Rangers lost a game to arguably the worst team in hockey it would have been a truly bad sign. They came out and were pushed around by the Hurricanes were quite some time but eventually got going with great chances that Khudobin would not let through. Just before the halfway mark of the period Dan Girardi took a shot that deflected off of Mats Zuccarello and then Derick Brassard and into the net to tie the game at one. The crowd at Madison Square Garden came alive and tried to force the Rangers to victory and after that point they played with some life and Khudobin had to hold on for the extra point. Duclair didn’t get too much ice time after the goal which I was confused about, but I’m not the coach so I won’t make the decision. The period ended and the two teams went to overtime as the Rangers finished the period up 11-10 in shots and 31-28 in shots for the game.
OVERTIME: Both teams had chances during the five-minute exchange. Lee Stempniak played well in that short time but that shouldn’t really have surprised anyone. The period ended and to the shootout we all went.
SHOOTOUT: First up was Zuccarello who was stopped by Khudobin, then went Alexander Semin who was stopped by Lundqvist. In the second round went Stempniak who was stopped by Khudobin and after him went Terry who was stopped Lundqvist. In the third round Rick Nash, the hero of this season so far went in and scored right past Khudobin and then Ryan Murphy came in on Lundqvist who stopped the shot and won the game.
THREE STARS
1) Henrik Lundqvist
2) Derick Brassard
3) Anton Khudobin