Guess who showed up in the Rangers’ win over Montreal?

The New York Rangers won their first game of the season, a clutch 3-1 road win over the Montreal Canadiens. Alexis Lafrenière was the hero, scoring the winning goal in the first game he has played in his hometown in front of friends and family.

With Ryan Strome out due to COVID and then losing Kaapo Kakko late in the first period with an upper body injury, coach Gerard Gallant was forced to juggle his lineup.  But it was the one line that remained intact that was the line that came through when they needed a goal.

The Rangers played almost the perfect road game.  They were diligent defensively, won the special teams war and counter punched when they blew a third period lead.  It didn’t hurt that Igor Shesterkin played one of his finest games as a Ranger, stymieing the Canadiens repeatedly especially in the second and third periods.

If there was one thing the Rangers did this game, it was clearing the front of the net so Shesterkin could see the shots. It reduced the number of rebounds and seeing and saving tough shots clearly gave Shesterkin confidence.

Gerard Gallant made a point of complimenting Shesterkin’s stickhanding, saying “He really did a great job clearing the puck tonight.  Montreal forechecked hard and probably 10 or 12 times he got the puck over the blue line and made good outlet passes to our forwards, so that was really key…he made some great saves.”

Ranger fans have been waiting for Alexis Lafrenière to elevate his game and this night he did it. He played with his usual linemates in MIka Zibanejad and Chris Kreider, but after Kakko went out with the injury, he found himself on the first power play unit.

As a result, he played 16:16 minutes including five minutes with the man advantage.  He led the team with five shots on goal, had three hits and was very involved from the get go. His only mistake was a third period tripping penalty in the offensive zone, but his teammates bailed him out and killed it.  Special players have the ability to rise to the occasion and Lafrenière showed something special.

The Rangers showed a lot of resilience.  The Canadiens came out with a lot of emotion and as Gallant said, “they came out pretty good and they were banging the body early, we were fortunate to get by the first seven or eight minutes.”   Then,  Kreider scored the power play goal to take the lead, a one goal lead they held on to until midway through the third period when a defensive breakdown left Jonathan Drouin wide open front of the Rangers net for an easy goal.  That’s when Adam Fox, Mika Zibanejad and Lafrenière took over.

We wanted to see a full 60 minute effort in this game and the Blueshirts came through. Excellent goalkeeping, timely scoring, special teams success and tough defense was the recipe for success.

Here is a five minute video recap of the game:

Gerard Gallant has one game in the win column as Rangers coach and he and the Blueshirts will go for two on Monday against the Maple Leafs.

It was Gallant’s 271st career win and he now has a record of 271-217-56.

Notes on the game

Chris Kreider scored the Rangers’ first goal of the game, another deflection.  It gives him three goals in three games, two on the power play.  A notorious slow starter, he has done that only once in his career, in 2016.  Last season it took him eight games to get his first three goals. The season before it took him 13 games.

Also with three points is Adam Fox who had another superlative game. The more you watch him, the evidence is there that he is one of, if not the best blueliner in  he NHL.  It’s not just the offense, it’s his defense that is just something special.

Though Mika Zibanejad and Artemi Panarin haven’t scored a goal yet, they are both getting close.  Zibanejad missed a couple one-timers and hit a post and was stopped on a shorthanded breakaway. Panarin is showing a reluctance to shoot, which is not a good thing.

Alexis Lafrenière is the first Quebec native to score for the Rangers against the Canadiens since Derick Brassard in March, 2016.  The most famous goal was Martin St. Louis’ overtime game winner against the Habs in the 2014 Conference Finals.

On his game winning goal, Lafrenière took a high stick from David Savard that caused a cut that needed stitches.  That should have been a penalty after the play, regardless that a goal was scored.  At the next faceoff, you could see Barclay Goodrow questioning the referee about that.

Kaapo Kakko left the game after the first period with an upper body injury.  He had exchange big hits with Alexander Romanov about 14 minutes into the period, but returned to play three full shifts.  After the game Gallant would just say it was “day to day.”

As a result of the loss of Strome and Kakko, at one point the Blueshirts had Dryden Hunt and Sammy Blais on the ice during a power play. If Kakko and Strome are going to be out for any time, you have to wonder what Vitali Kravtsov is thinking.

Greg McKegg was a late addition to the lineup instead of Julien Gauthier and he played only 7:27, but he did get over a minute on the penalty kill.

Morgan Barron has scored in each of the Wolf Pack’s first two games and it may be hard to keep him in the AHL much longer.

Adam Fox led all skaters with 26:48 minutes of ice time.  After the game, Gallant backed off his statements during training camp about limiting Fox’s minutes.  Before the season, he said it wasn’t necessary to play him 25 minutes a game.  Now, he is saying that 30 minutes per game is too much.

The Rangers got into penalty trouble early, taking two penalties in the first period. One was a soft holding call against Ryan Reaves and you have to wonder if the referees are looking for him.  The penalty kill was solid in this game, killing all three penalties after going four for eight in their first two games.

The Canadiens reciprocated in the second period, taking four straight penalties with the Rangers capitalizing on the third one. Ryan Reaves drew two of the four penalties.

Ben Chiarot was then guilty of a blatant trip of Chris Kreider, but the referees didn’t call it after whistling the Habs three straight times.

The Rangers got creamed on faceoffs, losing 34 while winning 22. Christian Dvorak won 15 of 22 draws.

Dvorak was a center that could have been a target for the Rangers. The Canadiens got him from Arizona for a first and second round pick after losing Jesperi Kotkaniemi.  Besides winning draws, he also set up the Habs only goal with an excellent pass to Jonathan Drouin.

Filip Chytil has definitely been working on faceoffs.  After four years finishing better than 40% only once, so far this season he has won 57.7%, second only to Kevin Rooney on the team. He won six of 11 draws this game.

Kevin Rooney added the empty net goal to seal the win.  He had one empty netter last season as well.

How good was Shesterkin?  The Canadiens had 26 scoring chances of which nine were high danger and he stopped all but one. This was the first time Shesterkin has played the Canadiens.

The Rangers have now won three straight at the Bell Centre.  Before those three wins the Rangers had won only 11 of 42 games in that arena.