Blue Line Station
Fansided

The good and the bad from the win over the Islanders

By Steve Paulus

UNIONDALE, NEW YORK - JANUARY 16: Anthony Beauvillier #18 of the New York Islanders skates in on Alexandar Georgiev #40 of the New York Rangers at NYCB Live's Nassau Coliseum on January 16, 2020 in Uniondale, New York. The Rangers defeated the Islanders 2-1. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
UNIONDALE, NEW YORK - JANUARY 16: Anthony Beauvillier #18 of the New York Islanders skates in on Alexandar Georgiev #40 of the New York Rangers at NYCB Live's Nassau Coliseum on January 16, 2020 in Uniondale, New York. The Rangers defeated the Islanders 2-1. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images) /
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Chris Kreider #20 of the New York Rangers scores the game winning goal
Chris Kreider #20 of the New York Rangers scores the game winning goal /

The issues

Okay, so the playoff picture is positive considering the last two wins.  What about the Islander game?  It’s worth looking at the statistics to see the real story.

How lucky were the Rangers?   Very lucky.  Except for the first half of the second period, the Islanders were the dominant team. It was another night of a Ranger goaltender bailing out the team and stealing a win.

The Islanders outshot the Rangers 40-28 including 22-6 in the first period and 13-10 in the third.  After they didn’t get a shot for the first 14 minutes of the second period, they finished the period strong.  They had 65 shot attempts to 53 for the Blueshirts, though the disparity in the first and third periods was greater, 51-32.   According to Naturalstattrick.com, their expected goal total was 3.9 so it was truly a case of Georgiev standing on his head.

The Rangers were outhit 38-30 and they reverted to their usual performance on faceoffs, losing 60% of the 60 draws.

Special teams were special

Besides the play of Georgiev, special teams won the game for the Rangers.   Not only did the Blueshirts kill all five Islander power plays, they allowed only eight shots on goal while shorthanded.   The Islanders had 17 shot attempts on the power play and the Rangers blocked seven of them.  That’s pretty special.

The Rangers’ power play wasn’t much better production-wise, but still ended up scoring two goals.  In five power plays, they had seven shots on goal and two went in. One important note is that although they had five power plays, they only had 6:42 of power play time due to their two goals.  The Islanders had 9:22 of time with the man advantage.

Perhaps most important is the fact that the Rangers took six minor penalties.  While the penalty killers excelled, the Islander power play isn’t very strong and against a better power play, the Rangers would be flirting with disaster.  Two of the penalties were avoidable, most notabley Tony DeAngelo‘s interference penalty when he clearly lost his cool after a Jordan Eberle slash and the Chris Kreider interference penalty when he took out Semyon Varlamov during a rush to the net.

DeAngelo was able to turn his bonehead move into a goal, but it was a Georgiev save that made that possible.  Kreider might have been forced into the contact, but with his reputation for running goalies he has to know a call is inevitable. Of course, when he scored the winning goal, all was forgiven. If the Isles had scored on the DeAngelo or Kreider penalties, we would be writing a very different story.

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