A big 4-3 overtime win over the Islanders in a playoff atmosphere

The game

The Islanders came out hard in the first period, intent on burying the Rangers.  The crowd was loud and the Isles responded. They swarmed the Rangers and by the time the Blueshirts had killed a penalty with 3:45 left in the period, they had outshot the Rangers 15-5.

You can give all of the credit to Alexandar Georgiev who was a rock in goal.  Despite a long layoff, Georgiev was ready for this game and he kept it scoreless.

That’s when the Rangers totally flipped the match and of course, it was Artemi Panarin who was responsible.

Ryan Lindgren laid a perfect pass to Panarin who was hanging by the goal mouth and netminder Semyon Varlamov had absolutely no chance. It was Panarin’s 32nd goal of the season a new career high. Despite being overwhelmed, the Rangers got out of the first period with a 1-0 lead.

The Islanders were totally dominant, outshooting the Rangers 15-7 and owning a 32-16 advantage in shot attempts

The Rangers goal and lead took the crowd out of the game and it became even quieter when Greg McKegg got his fourth goal of the season, with a sweet deflection of a shot by Brendan Lemieux.

Lemieux channeled Martin St. Louis, calling for the puck on a pass from Adam Fox and firing a one timer on one knee.  The shot was destined to go wide, but McKegg made a beautiful deflection and the Rangers had a 2-0 lead.

At that point the Rangers were totally in control until the Islanders were the beneficiaries of as lucky a goal you will ever see in an NHL game.

Ryan Pulock‘s point shot hit one of the stanchions in the glass behind the net and bounced right to J.G. Pageau while Georgiev and Marc Staal were looking where the puck should have gone.  It was the easiest goal that Pageau will score this season.

In the third period there were some  fisticuffs when Jacob Trouba absolutely leveled Michael Dal Colle with an open ice hit.

Pageau immediately jumped Trouba and was hit with 17 minutes in penalties.   Four minutes late the Rangers opened a two goal lead on another deflection goal, this one by Brett Howden.

Brendan Smith, newly instituted as a regular on defense, fired the shot from the blue line and Howden deflected it past Varlamov.

At this point, the game went a little haywire.  The Islanders though Devon Toews had scored, but the goal was immediately waved off for goalie interference.   Barry Trotz challenged the call and lost so the Isles found themselves down two goals and killing a penalty with 7:44 left in the game.

That was all well and good except Ryan Strome took a dumb tripping penalty and during the brief 14 second power play, Jordan Eberle broke in and took a feed from Matt Barzal and scored, pulling the Isles within a goal.

The Rangers were hanging on from that point and the Islanders pulled Varlamov, kept the puck in the Rangers zone and Brock Nelson tied the scored with only 18 second left in the game.

So the game went to overtime and it was the opportunity for the best players on the Rangers to step up.  Artemi Panarin stole the puck and drove to the Islander net where he was checked by all three Islanders.  He was able to flick the puck to a wide open Mika Zibanejad who was trailing the play.  He didn’t miss.

Despite Varlamov coming way out of the net, Zibanejad took a big windup and slapped the puck past the Islander goalie for the win just 28 seconds into the overtime.

The Rangers blew a 3-1 lead and let the Islanders steal a valuable point, but it was another character building win for this young Ranger team and a record setting win to boot.

Now, it’s two crucial road games in Montreal and Philadelphia before returning home for the second game of a home and home versus the Flyers.