The Rangers rebound with a big 5-0 win over the Islanders

The game

With rookie Ilya Sorokin in net for the Islanders, the Rangers’ mission was to shoot early and often.  It paid off when Pavel Buchnevich scored on the Rangers’ second shot of the game.  Mika Zibanejad stole the puck at the blue line and fed Buchnevich on a two on one.   As the Swede crashed the net, Buchnevich lasered a shot past Sorokin and just 2:12 into the game, they were ahead.

It was a great shot by Buchnevich, but Zibanejad made the play.

Trouble loomed when Chris Kreider took a slashing penalty two minutes later, but the Rangers were able to kill it until Anders Lee took a penalty to equalize manpower.  From that point play was pretty even and Georgiev made six tough saves.

That’s when a defensive play by Brendan Smith really turned the game around.

Smith blocked a pass and took the puck,feeding a breaking Artemi Panarin. In the battle between one of the best scorers in the league and a rookie goalie, guess who won?

From that point it was all Rangers.  They took a 2-0 lead into the second period and again, it was Buchnevich with the goal to pad the lead.  Scott Mayfield gave the puck away at the blueline and Buchnevich took it from there.

If Kaapo Kakko was upset about moving down to the third line, he must have really been demoralized by losing his slot on the second power play unit.  He made up for it with a lovely second period goal that was made by a Filip Chytil steal and a great feed from Phil Di Giuseppe for the one timer.

Going into the third period with a 4-0 lead, the only question was whether Georgiev would get the shutout and the only negative was the Rangers’ inability to score on the power play.  The solved that problem in the third period and it was Artemi Panarin again.

Buchnevich took the shot and the rebound went to Fox who made a nice tip pass to Panarin who hammered it home.

With that, it was the first win of the season and a clear example of what the Rangers need to do to win.