Third period comeback as Rangers beat Flyers 3-2

About the game

The Rangers got off to a very good start as Flyers’ goalie Carter Hart stoned Artemi Panarin in the first minute. When Claude Giroux was called for hooking Kevin Rooney, the Blueshirts’ power play went to work.  It took 46 seconds for Mika Zibanejad to blast a one-timer past Hart, from Artemi Panarin’s usual spot.

At that point, six minutes in,  the Rangers had dominated the game with 13 shot attempts and three that ended up on goal.

The goal seemed to wake up the Flyers and they had the better of the play the rest of the period. At the 11:45 mark, Philadelphia got on the board when Oskar Lindblom put home the rebound of a Travis Konecny shot.

The goal came off a turnover in center ice when Ryan Strome sent a pass to Filip Chytil that was behind and the Flyers took off.  Shesterkin made the initial save, but nobody (Ryan Strome) picked up Lindblom.

Filip Chytil almost put the Rangers up a goal when his backhand eluded Hart only to hit the post, then rolled off the goalie’s back only for the puck to swept off the goal line by Keith Yandle.

The teams played a scoreless second period with both teams not taking advantage of a power play.  The Rangers played a very solid defense and didn’t allow a Philadelphia shot on goal for the last nine minutes of the period.

Things looked bad in the third period when Cam York scored his first NHL goal.  Zack MacEwen made a great move to the net and was stopped by Shesterkin, but Fox cleared the puck to the boards when York picked it up and fired the shot past the Ranger goalie, who was screened by Kevin Rooney and K’Andre Miller.  The goal came at the 10:11 mark.

That goal seemed to wake the Rangers up and it took them all of 37 seconds to tie the score. It was a great play as Fox carried the puck into the offensive zone and fed Strome who passed to Panarin who gave it to Chytil for the tip-in.

It was poetic justice for the maligned Chytil and finally a good play by Strome who had been less than great the last three games.

The Rangers fine play continued and they scored the game winner less than three minutes later.  They got the puck in deep and Kaapo Kakko passed to the point where Fox skated in and sent the puck on net where Kreider was able to put the deflection past Hart.

It was a great move by Fox and also by Zibanejad who deked the Flyers by not playing the puck and letting it go to Fox at the point for the shot.

It was a fairly frenetic last five minutes with the Flyers pulling Hart with about two minutes left.  Shesterkind did his best work in the last five minutes of the period to preserve the lead.

There was a huge scare when the Flyers shot the puck from their blue line and Joel Farabee deflected it in center ice enough for Shesterkin to miss it.  It hit the post and the Ranger goalie was able to grab it.

Here is a video recap of the game.

It was a third period comeback as the Rangers found a way to win and preserved their hold on first place in the Metropolitan Division.