Rangers knot series at 2 games apiece with 4-1 win

This was as close to a laugher as we have had in this series as the New York Rangers never trailed in a 4-1 win at Madison Square Garden.  They have come back from a 0-2 deficit to tie the Carolina Hurricanes in their second round playoff series.  That means they will play at least one more game this season at the Garden.

The teams followed the script with all the games won by the home team in this series.  In fact, the Hurricanes are yet to win on the road this postseason, winning all six home games and losing all five road games.  Of course, for the Rangers to win this series, they have to break that streak.

The expected confrontation between Ryan Reaves and Max Domi didn’t happen until the last 10 seconds of the game, and at that it was relatively uneventful.

But it was Max Domi who was involved in a key play in the game. At 11:38, Jacob Trouba laid a big hit on Domi that turned the tide for the Blueshirts and gave them the  impetus for the win.   After Jacob Trouba laid out Domi with a big hit, he was attacked by Steven Lorentz who ended up with the instigator penalty and a misconduct.  The Rangers scored on the subsequent power play and never trailed.

Coach Gerard Gallant talked about how important it was. “That was a big hit by Troubs.  He steps up at the blue line and obviously it was a big part of the game. Good, clean hard hit, they stepped up and got an instigator penalty and we scored, capitalized on it.  It was big for us.”

Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour actually didn’t complain about the instigator penalty saying “I know our guy comes in after the hit. I think they’re trying to do a job on that. If it’s a good hit, you shouldn’t come in.  He got cross checked pretty good in the face when he comes in.  It’s over.”

Adam Fox talked about it as well. “Trouba’s kind of done that all year. I don’t know if we needed a jolt to get going, but he got everyone going, defended himself and got us a power play and we scored there. It’s a big turning point in the game for sure.”

 Close to a 60 minute effort

Coach Gallant agreed that this was as good as effort as they have had all season.  He did say that the team sat back after getting ahead 3-0 and focused on protecting the lead, something he does not want to see.   With the Rangers on their heels a bit and back to the dump and defend play that hurt them in Game One, Gallant called Andrew Copp’s goal to restore the three goal lead “huge.”

All through the series he has emphasized that either team could have won any of the games including this one.   The very fact that the games were so close was one reason why the Blueshirts were never in danger of being out of the picture.  As Ryan Lindgren said about losing the first two games,  “We were down but we were never out. We come back here, feed off our crowd and get two big wins.”

The Shesterkin factor

Igor Shesterkin has been excellent and he might have made his best safe just 73 seconds into the game when he stopped Brett Pesce.

That allowed the Rangers to take over play and dominate the first period.

Shesterkin has been outstanding in this series.  He has allowed five goals in the four games with a save percentage of .959.  In his postgame press conference Rod Brind’Amour said that he was happy with the looks the Hurricanes had, but they just couldn’t score on them.

The power play takes over

The Rangers had an early power play on a Seth Jarvis tripping call and though they didn’t score, the Rangers were in the Carolina zone for the entire two minutes and had that set the stage for the second power play of the period when they did score on a goal by Frank Vatrano.

It was the second straight game with a power play goal and they stopped both of the Carolina man advantages.   The Rangers had seven shots with five of them high danger chances in 3 :53 of power play time in the first period.

Just over two minutes after the Vatrano goal, it was Adam Fox deflecting a Ryan Lindgren shot from the top of the faceoff circle.

The two goal lead was huge for the Rangers and it was made possible when Chris Kreider used his feet to get the puck deeper into the one when his stick broke.

A potent offense

The Rangers padded the lead when Mika Zibanejad scored when another Ryan Lindgren blast was stopped by Antti Raanta , but trickled through him with Zibanejad on the doorstep.

The goal came at 16:48 of the second period after the Rangers had almost scored shorthanded.  Chris Kreider and Zibanejad had a two-on-one and Raanta was able to stop Zibanejad’s attempt.

Teuvo Teravainnen had  scored 6:33 into the third period after a giveaway in the defensive zone and Ranger fans were a little nervous with the team protecting the dreaded two goal lead.

Artemi Panarin had a breakaway stopped by Raanta three minutes later and that looked like it could be costly, but Andrew Copp then scored on a give-and-go with Ryan Strome to restore the three goal lead.

The goal came at the 11:10 mark and the Rangers went into a defensive shell for the last nine minutes, allowing only four shots on goal by Carolina.

Here is a video recap of the game.

There are some issues facing the Blueshirts.