The New York Rangers will be looking for their third straight win as they host the Carolina Hurricanes in a Wednesday night match-up from the World’s Most Famous Arena.
On Monday, the New York Rangers defeated the Minnesota Wild 3-2 in overtime and will try and complete a two game home stand sweep as they take on the Carolina Hurricanes in an Eastern Conference match-up.
The month of November has been very kind to the New York Rangers and their fanbase after a mediocre month of October. The Rangers have gone 7-4-1 and have garnered at least one point in their last eight games. The Blueshirts have finally started to click offensively, as they’ve scored at least three goals in eight of their last nine games.
That can mostly be accredited to the outstanding play of Artemi Panarin. Overall, the Rangers are 11-9-2 with 24 points and occupy the sixth spot in the Metropolitan Division. The Hurricanes, on the other hand, sit at 15-8-1 with 31 points and are in the third spot in the Metropolitan Division. With a win, the Rangers could gain some ground on the Hurricanes and join an already crowded, middle of the pack, Metropolitan Division.
Panarin has been playing on another planet lately after an okay start with the Blueshirts. He’s registered at least two points in four of his last five games, as well as, becoming the first Ranger since Pavel Bure to tally eight multi-point games in a 10 game span. He also has 18 points in his last 10 games which is the third most in the NHL behind Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. Not too shabby considering that McDavid and Draisaitl are the top two point getters in the NHL this season.
To say that Panarin has found a groove is an understatement. He’s been killing it on the offensive side of the puck. Not only that, Panarin loves to play at the Garden. He has 15 goals and 15 assists in 19 games at MSG and has only been shut out twice.
Although the Rangers have scored plenty of goals, they have given up even more goals in their past five games. The combination of Henrik Lundqvist and Alexandar Georgiev in the net hasn’t been ideal these past few games as they’ve allowed a combined 16 goals, or 3.2 per game. This is not even adding in the nine spot they gave up to the Tampa Bay Lightning just about two weeks ago.
At some point during this season, the Rangers will not be putting up huge numbers offensively as every team goes through a slump at one point or another. Lundqvist and Georgiev need to step it up, and what better way to step it up then against a team that occupies a spot in your division that you’d like to have.
The last time these two teams met, the Rangers defeated the Hurricanes 4-2 in Carolina in a game that Lundqvist absolutely stole, making 45 saves. . Panarin, Brendan Lemieux, Filip Chytil and Adam Fox all came away with goals. Dougie Hamilton and Sebastian Aho put in the two goals for the Canes that evening.