Pavel Buchnevich decided to celebrate his 26th birthday by scoring a hat trick, becoming the only New York Rangers player to accomplish that feat. It was fifth Ranger goal in a 6-3 win, a final score that did not reflect the closeness of the game.
The Rangers get in trouble when they take an early lead. For the third straight game, they scored early and often against the Devils and as a result, they eased off on team defense and were outchanced, outshot and in this game, almost outscored. You can’t take the win away from the team, but they need to be better down the stretch against better teams.
Bizarrely, it took a penalty kill to get the Rangers back on the right track. When Colin Blackwell went off for slashing with six minutes left, the Devils were storming. The penalty kill stopped the New Jersey offense in its tracks and they could never get going again.
David Quinn had warned about a letdown before every game this series. “Once we got up 4-0, I really thought we disrespected the game and our opponent. Leading into it we did all the things we needed to do…If we think its ever going to be easy, we’re sadly sadly mistaken…Our goalie made some great saves and was instrumental in our win. We got outplayed the second half of that game.”
Artemi Panarin had spoken about the need to tighten up the defense after the last game and he repeated those comments. “Obviously, we didn’t fix those things enough. we didn’t clean them up enough. We gave up too many goals, got a little bit sloppy and relaxed and had to correct things again but thankfully we pulled it out. We have to keep working on them.”
The difference with this Ranger team now is that they found a way to win. They blew ten third period leads in the first 37 games this season. That’s eight lost points in the standings, but they haven’t done it since April 3 and this game was a perfect candidate. Luckily, the penalty kill came through and they remembered how to play defense and scored two empty net goals to seal the win.
Here is a video recap of the game: