New heroes for the Rangers in 4-3 shootout win

The New York Rangers blew another third period lead, the fourth time this season, but they went to a shootout for the first time and won in seven rounds. It was a thrilling game for fans, but it was the kind of game that gives coaches ulcers. The Blueshirts came away with another two points and the only negatives were that gifted a Metropolitan Division rival a point and they might have lost Sammy Blais for a while with a knee injury.  We’ll get to the Blais injury in a moment.

The most important developments for the Rangers were that they got goals from Kaapo Kakko and Alexis Lafrenière, both who had been slumping and they got a solid performance in goal from Alexandar Georgiev, especially in the shootout.   They also won without getting scoring from Artemi Panarin or Mika Zibanejad and that has to be a positive.

Gallant was very complimentary about the play of his young players, especially Kaapo Kakko saying “The kid played great tonight, he looked like a beast and I’m happy for him.”

With the fact that Lafrenière also scored, Gallant said  “Those kids are young kids, you just have to keep playing them…they’re gonna be good players for us and if they can do what they did tonight it will really help our team.”

The Blais injury

The Blais injury will be getting a lot of attention for the next few days as it appeared to have been caused by P.K. Subban. At 3:53 of the third period, the two players were going into the boards and Subban used his right foot to drive Blais’ leg awkwardly into the boards.  When Blais went down, he twisted his leg and had to leave the ice without putting any weight on it.

Subban has already had three incidents this season involving slewfoots including one in the preseason with Ryan Reaves.  In October he was fined $5,000 for tripping Milan Lucic of Calgary and on November 2 he tripped Trevor Zegras of Anaheim and was fined $15,000.   Subban wasn’t penalized on the play, but you could see Gallant saying “four times” to the referee after the play.  Hopefully the league will look at it.

When asked about it, all Gallant would say was “It’s a lot like the Reaves one that I saw.”

The game was too close for the Rangers to retaliate and risk penalties and now it will have to wait until March as the teams don’t meet again for the next four months.

About the game

The Rangers came out of the first period trailing by a goal as the Devils scored on a breakaway by Jesper Bratt. Georgiev has been struggling with breakaways and when Bratt put the puck under him, it didn’t bode well, but he withstood any other challenges, stopping nine Devils’ shots.

Six minutes into the second period, of course it was Adam Fox who came through with the tying goal on yet another wicked backhand.  It was an unassisted goal, but was due to hard work by Julien Gauthier and Lafrenière.

Just after a Rangers’ power play expired, the second unit cashed in as Lafrenière banged home a rebound to put New York up 2-1.  The play was made by Kaapo Kakko who passed up a couple shooting opportunities to pass the puck to Jacob Trouba who took the shot that ended up on Lafrenière’s stick.

A slashing penalty by Jimmy Vesey had expired just four seconds earlier so it was virtually a power play goal.

The Devils got it right back on the power play after an awful penalty call for on Ryan Lindgren.  Dougie Hamilton’s pass hit Bratt’s skate and bounced right back to him and he rushed into the Rangers’ zone and put a wrist shot past Georgiev.  That was one that the goalie would want back.

Tied going into the third period, Kaapo Kakko finally broke his goal scoring drought and put the Rangers up 3-2 at the 6:29 mark.  He made the defensive play to gain possession, got into the Devils’ zone on a  break-in with Ryan Strome.  They executed a give-and-go and Kaako crash the net to put a backhand past Mackenzie Blackwood.

Blackwood was injured in the collision and had to leave for the concussion protocol.

With a cold Jonathan Bernier coming into the game you would think the Rangers would pour it on, but instead it was New Jersey who controlled play and had the Blueshirts on their heels. With just 2:44 left in the game, Pavel Zacha was able to beat Georgiev on a wide open shot from the slot that the Ranger goalie stopped, but the rebound went right to the Devil and he put it in.  The goal was the result of an over commitment by the fourth line with all three Ranger forwards in deep behind the Devils goal line when New Jersey gained possession and was able to break out with an odd man rush.

The overtime was another thriller with the two teams exchanging possession, but unable to score.

The first shootout of the season was dilly, going seven rounds. Kaapo Kakko, Artemi Panarin and Ryan Strome all scored after the Devils had taken the lead and after Georgiev stoned Pavel Zacha, Chris Kreider faked Jonathan Bernier for the fourth and winning goal.

Here’s a video recap of the game

3 Rangers stars

1. Kaapo Kakko had his most dynamic game of the season and it finally paid off on the scoresheet.  Not only that, he scored a key goal in the shootout and the hope has to be that this will jump start his offense.
2. Alexis Lafreniere played an important role on two of the Rangers’ goals and was rewarded with 13:48 minutes of playing time, the most minutes for him in three games.
3. Adam Fox scored yet another goal at a crucial point.  At this point, we may decided to award an honorary star to Fox in every game. He’s that good.  If we did that, we could give stars to players like Chris Kreider who won the shootout or Alexandar Georgiev who was stellar in goal.

The official 3 stars

1. Kaapo Kakko
2. Adam Fox
3. Pavel Zacha

What’s next

The Rangers have one day off before taking on the Montreal Canadiens at the Garden on Tuesday night.  The game will be televised on MSG Network locally and live streamed nationally on ESPN+.   They will be trying to equal their longest winning streak of the season, four games. They haven’t won more than four games in a row since a five-game winning streak in February 2020.