Game two of the New York Rangers Western Canada road trip as the Blueshirts take on the struggling Calgary Flames.
The Calgary Flames have lost five in a row at home and the New York Rangers want to make it six. The key question is whether the Rangers will build off their impressive 22 minutes of play in Edmonton or will they be the disorganized defensive mess that let the Oilers get a 6-0 lead.
It will Henrik Lundqvist in net, taking on his one-time heir apparent and protege, Cam Talbot. Lundqvist came in to relieve Georgiev in Edmonton and made a spectacular stop to stop the bleeding and had a quiet rest of the game as the Blueshirts were dominant. He faced only six shots in over 24 minutes of play.
The loss to Edmonton was the 19th one goal game of the season for the Blueshirts. The Rangers have a 9-10 record. Their pace is better than last season when they played 54 one goals games, losing 31 of them.
With 42 points, the Rangers are one point ahead of where they were last season after 39 games.
Steven Fogarty has replaced Micheal Haley in the starting lineup, but isn’t seeing much ice time. He played only 2:46 in his first game in Toronto and played 8:46 against Edmonton.
The Rangers defense has scored 26 goals and added 70 assists for 96 points. Compare that to Calgary with 15 goals and 39 assists for 54 points. Both teams have issues with secondary scoring. The bottom six forwards for the Rangers have scored 24 goals compared to 25 for the Flames.
Late this afternoon the Flames swapped Michael Frolik to Buffalo for a 2020 4th round pick that belongs to San Jose.
Projected Lineups
New York Rangers
10 Panarin – 16 Strome – 17 Fast
20 Kreider – 93 Zibanejad – 89 Buchnevich
21 Howden – 72 Chytil – 24 Kakko
42 Smith – 14 McKegg – 29 Fogarty
76 Skjei – 8 Trouba
55 Lindgren – 23 Fox
18 Staal – 77 DeAngelo
30 Lundqvist
40 Georgiev
Calgary Flames
13 Johnny Gaudreau – 23 Sean Monahan – 16 Tobias Rieder
19 Matthew Tkachuk – 11 Mikael Backlund – 28 Elias Lindholm
17 Milan Lucic – 10 Derek Ryan – 93 Sam Bennett
36 Zac Rinaldo – 29 Dillon Dube – 88 Andrew Mangiapane
5 Mark Giordano – 4 Rasmus Andersson
55 Noah Hanifin – 24 Travis Hamonic
58 Oliver Kylington – 26 Michael Stone
39 Cam Talbot
33 David Rittich
Join the live conversation!
The live thread certainly changed over the course the Edmonton game. From a 6-0 blowout to a 6-5 nailbiter, it definitely was fodder for conversation.
The live thread is open now!
The game is televised on the MSG Network and the radio call is on ESPN 98.7 FM.