Rangers outlast Red Wings in overtime 5-4

The New York Rangers keep finding ways to win.  They took the second game of a road back-to-back  with a tried and true formula, a late power play tying goal and a win in overtime.  It really shouldn’t have been necessary against a challenged team like the Red Wings, but the Rangers’ play was nowhere near as crisp as it was the night before and they got substandard goaltending from Alexandar Georgiev.

Georgiev admitted after the game that he had a tough start. “Not the best start for sure, just had to get through it and keep going.”  He did say that it helped that the score was tied after the first period. He said “It was good for me, they bailed me out, kept scoring…they played great.”

Gallant was asked if he ever considered pulling Georgiev and his answer was one word. “Nope.”

In fact, both goalies were less than great.  Georgiev allowed four goals with two on the power play, with the Expected Goals For at 1.74.  Alex Nedeljkovic was shaky at times and allowed five goals, more than the Expect Goals For total of 3.84.

Still, it never felt like the Blueshirts were out of the game and when they got a power play with only four minutes left, a tie game felt inevitable.  It’s actually getting a little ridiculous.  This was the Rangers’ 24th come-from-behind win of the season, leading the league and the most in team history.

Gerard Gallant was philosophical  about the effort. “Finding a way…it wasn’t pretty, but one of those games. Tonight was a different type of game than last night, but the bottom line is we get two big points and we move on.”

He expected a letdown “I expected us not to be same as last night…it’s just not the same atmosphere…it was sort of back and forth…but we found a way to stay close all night and got the result at the end.”

It’s easy to pick on a team when it takes overtime to beat a team like Detroit, but playing back-to-back games on the road isn’t easy.   This was their fourth such set of games this season and they have won both games twice, lost both games once and had one split.  Overall, in the second game of back-to-backs the Rangers have a 7-4-1 record.

Should we be alarmed by the fact that they were trashed by the Devils and had to take the Sabres and Red Wings to win in their last three games against non-playoff teams?  No.  For the simple fact that they are NOT playoff teams.  Their record against playoff teams since February 1 is 12-1-0.