New York Rangers: Good game, bad loss 3-1 to the St. Louis Blues
By Steve Paulus
The game
The Rangers knew they had to get out to a fast start and they started with a strong effort. In the first 11 minutes, the Blueshirts had nine shot attempts to five for the Blues and did an excellent job keeping St. Louis on the perimeter. They finally got a break when Robert Bortuzzo got called for tripping and the Rangers went on the power play.
After Mika Zibanejad won the faceoff, the Rangers kept the puck in the Blues’ zone and were guilty of overpassing, but it worked when Pavel Buchnevich fed Ryan Strome who made the pass to the wide open Zibanejad.
For Zibanejad it was his team leading 33rd goal and it gave the Rangers the lead, the question was whether they could hold on to it.
The first period ended 1-0 and the teams were in a virtual statistical dead heat with each getting seven shots on goal. Other than the goal, the highlight was a massive hit by Ryan Lindgren on Oskar Sundqvist with a minute left in the period.
The lead lasted only two and a half minutes into the second period. Ryan Strome was called for slashing Ryan O’Reilly just 1:13 into the period and after the Rangers were able to kill off the first 1:15, Colton Parayko tied the score.
It was a broken play as Zibanejad had a chance to clear, but couldn’t get it out of the Rangers’ zone. Parayko picked up the puck and put it past Georgiev. That’s three straight penalties for Strome that ended up with pucks in the back of the Rangers’ net.
Parayko had been ill and was a game time decision, just like Sean Couturier for the Flyers on Sunday. Both ailing players scored key goals. Meanwhile, Georgiev made his saves of the game just before Parayko scored as he stopped three straight shots from David Perron and Jaden Schwartz.
From that point it was another evenly played, at times, thrilling period. In fact, after Ryan O’Reilly won a faceoff at 8:42, there wasn’t another play stoppage until an icing at 19:37, an amazing 10:55 without a whistle.
Shots were 15-14 in favor of the Blueshirts and the Rangers led in blocked shots and takeaways.
It was more of the same in the third period until a seemingly innocuous play resulted in the winning goal.
It was a simple wrap around by Brayden Schenn , but for some reason Georgiev did not go down to protect the goal and the puck hit his right foot and bounced into the net. It was a bad goal for Georgiev and a lucky goal for Schenn, but that’s what you get when you just put the puck on net, something the Rangers don’t do enough of.
The last thing you want to do is give the defending champions a one goal lead with ten minutes left in the third period and as much as the Blueshirts pushed, they were unable to put one past Jordan Binnington and the Blues sealed the win with an empty net goal by Jaden Schwartz with only six seconds left.
It was a bitter defeat for the Rangers. They played well enough to win, but it was St. Louis who scored the timely goals, the sign of a championship team.