New York Rangers Blow Past Canucks
By Kenny Belvin
FINAL SCORE: New York Rangers – 5 Vancouver Canucks – 1
FIRST PERIOD: The Rangers were looking to come out in this period with a fast start to the game, and speaking of Fast (sorry bad pun) Jesper Fast skated up to the opposing blueline and passed the puck over to a streaking Ryan McDonagh who taps the puck past Ryan Miller for his first goal of the season to give the Rangers an early 1-0 lead. Less than a minute later, Martin St. Louis threw the puck to Derek Stepan who threw the puck over to J.T. Miller who tallied his third goal in five games to give the Rangers a 2-0 lead. Three minutes later, Derick Brassard and Rick Nash (of course) broke out of and managed to get the puck to Mats Zuccarello who scored his fifth goal of the season to give the Rangers a 3-0 lead early on in the game. The Rangers scored three goals on four shots early on in the period, they continued on dominating the play in the period and got quite a few chances going through the period. There were NO penalties taken this period, it ended and the Rangers were up 3-0, but down 7-6 in shots.
SECOND PERIOD: The Rangers came out in this period with a continuation of what happened in the period before it. They dominated the play for most of the period and had a heavy shot advantage. Close to the midway point of the second period Marc Staal blasts a shot from the blueline through a couple of players and past Miller to give the Rangers a 4-0 lead. With the goal, Kevin Hayes tallied an assist and extended his point scoring streak to five games. The Canucks battled back a little bit but couldn’t seem to get anything going on Henrik Lundqvist, at 12:27 in the period Martin St. Louis was awarded a penalty shot that was stopped by Ryan Miller, St. Louis is 0 for 7 all time on penalty shots, weird right? Five minutes after that Brassard and Nash again shot up the ice and Brassard found a streaking Zuccarello who put his second goal of the night past Miller to extend the Rangers lead to 5-0. This was Zuccarello’s first career two goal game. The period came to an end and the Rangers were up 5-0 and 17-15 in shots.
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THIRD PERIOD: It’s after midnight in New York so props to all the Rangers fans who stayed up through the full length of this game. The third period started and the Rangers seemed to have an edge that would sail them to a shutout victory, but four minutes into the period Nick Bonino broke into the zone and roofed a shot over the glove of Lundqvist to end the shutout bid. After the goal the Rangers had to really battle the Canucks to make sure they didn’t lose the momentum of the game, McDonagh took a penalty at the midway point in the period and the Rangers, mostly Lundqvist killed off the penalty. The Rangers were able to roll all four lines smoothly tonight and they all played exceptionally well, moved with speed, worked well with each other and managed to get sufficient time in the offensive zone while playing well defensively. The Rangers played well but not so hard in this period as to overexert themselves for tomorrow night’s game against the Edmonton Oilers. The game came to an end and the Rangers won 5-1, but the Rangers ended the game down 30-23 in shots.
THREE STARS:
1) Ryan McDonagh
2) Mats Zuccarello
3) Rick Nash