Shesterkin stars in a wild 2-1 shootout win over Boston

About the game

The Rangers looked pretty awful in the first period.  They couldn’t get shots on the Boston net and Barclay Goodrow made an uncharacteristic awful pass in center ice that led to the Bruins goal, just 3:39 into the game.  The team acknowledged that they weren’t very good in their first period back from a two week layoff.

Coach Gerard  Gallant said as much.  “There was some rust in the first period, again, it wasn’t that bad, they had two scoring chances, we had one. It wasn’t brutal, but it wasn’t what we wanted…in the first we  had some bad turnovers, but after that we were much better.”

It’s true.  The Rangers were outshot 8-2 in the first period, but they had eight shot attempts to 12 for the Bruins.  Boston was adept at blocking shots and keeping the puck away from Jeremy Swayman, their goalie.

The Boston goal was scored by Charlie Coyle who got to the rebound of a shot by Craig Smith after Goodrow tried to make a bump pass to a streaking Ryan Lindgren, but it was intercepted by Coyle and the Bruins had a two-on-one  break.

The second period was much better for the Blueshirts as they outshot the Bruins 15-9 and had several sustained shifts in the attack zone.  The best work was done by the third and fourth lines and both lines threw hits with abandon.  Still, neither team was able to score and the third period began with the Rangers trailing 1-0.  Swayman was doing his best to stop the Blueshirts and made some fine saves. With one shutout in two starts against New York, it looked like he was headed for another one.

Again, the Rangers had the better of the play and it finally paid off when Zac Jones fed Braden Schneider who passed to Dryden Hunt who gave the puck to Filip Chytil in a play at the blue line that was incredibly close to being offside.  Chytil went to the net and Swayman made the initial save, but Chytil stuck with the play and got to the rebound and tucked it past the Boston goalie.

With just over 11 minutes left in the period, Shesterkin stopped Taylor Hall on a breakaway.

There was a bit of an adventure when K’Andre Miller took a tripping penalty at 11:48, but the Rangers penalty kill was outstanding with as many offensive opportunities as Boston.

The Rangers had their chance when Charlie McAvoy went off on a tripping call, but the first unit couldn’t get anything going.

That left the game to go to overtime and the Rangers outshot the Bruins 6-3 with Artemi Panarin stopped on a breakaway.  Then, with 41 seconds left there was the concussion protocol insanity.

In the shootout, Mika Zibanejad and Artemi Panarin scored on the Rangers’ first two attempts.

Jake DeBrusk scored on the Bruins first attempt then Charlie Coyle tied the shootout on their third try.   From that point on it was the goalie’s show as Alexis Lafreniere, Adam Fox, Ryan Strome,  Chris Kreider, Filip Chytil and Dryden Hunt were all stopped.  On the Rangers’ ninth attempt, Gallant sent out defenseman K’Andre Miller and he slipped a backhand by Swayman for the win.

Here’s a full video recap of the game.

The Rangers won another game that needed to win and they did in dramatic fashion.  They were able to overcome the bye week blues to beat a very determined Boston squad.  It was impressive.