Late in the hockey season when a team is fighting for a playoff spot, fans will often look back with regret at the points lost in October and November. This season, the New York Rangers are making it a habit of not losing any points and when March and April roll around, that could be really significant.
They did it again in Ottawa, miraculously coming back from a 2-0 deficit with just under five minutes left in the game. They didn’t stop after they tied the game with 4:08 left, they won the game with 2:03 left. Amazingly, this was the first time the Rangers have ever come back to win a game that they trailed by more than one goal in the final six minutes of regulation.
Per @PR_NHL, the Rangers scored three goals in a span of 3:20 in the third period to erase a 2-0 deficit, marking the first time in franchise history that the club has won a game in which it faced a multi-goal deficit in the final six minutes of regulation. pic.twitter.com/K5EjGQXSk8
— NY Rangers PR (@NYR_PR) October 23, 2021
How unusual was it? The last time any NHL team did that was in December 2013 when the Flyers did it against Columbus.
It means the Rangers swept all four games on the road, the first time they have swept a four-game road trip since 2014-15. It was also first time since 1990-1991 for the Blueshirts to win their first three games against different teams from Canada.
While the win was a positive, the good news was that there were other positives. Chris Kreider scored the Rangers first power play goal in three games and 12 tries. Barclay Goodrow scored the game winner, the first goal by a bottom six forward not scored into an empty net. Alexandar Georgiev recovered from a rocky start when he allowed a goal in the first minute to make some outstanding saves in third period to keep the team in the game. It will be a shot of confidence for Georgiev, which he needed. Finally, they won a game after going into the third period trailing, something that they have not done very often. They have trailed going into the third 120 times since 2017-18 and they’ve come back to win only 15 of those games.
Coach Gerard Gallant said that the team didn’t play to “an elite level” but he said that they kept it close and “we got a chance to score a power play goal and things went our way.”
The Rangers are alone in first place in the Metropolitan Division though they have played more games than any other team in the Division.