Game Five Looms as the Rangers Look to Regain Series Lead
By Conor Power
After that dismal game four performance, the Rangers have a clean slate tonight. With the series tied at 2, it’s simply a best of three. The winner moves on, loser goes home. It’s the Prudential Center that will play host to this game tonight as the Rangers look to regain the series lead with a victory in New Jersey. It was the Rangers who claimed both games on this ice at the beginning of this series.
Someone needs to wake up the Rangers top stars ahead of this one. Artemi Panarin and Mika Zibanejad both have a two assists and that is it in this series. If the Rangers’ best players are not able to be the difference makers in this series, this is not going to be a deep playoff run for the Blueshirts. If the Rangers stars do not wake up soon, the hole the Blueshirts find themselves in will just be too much to overcome.
New Jersey has won the last two games in this series but have such a pedestrian record at home so it is important the for Rangers to win tonight. Regain control of this series and push the Devils to the brink of elimination. If the Rangers can do that and give themselves a chance to close the series out on home ice, there will be no pressure because even another defeat at MSG would see the series go back to Newark for Game 7.
New York Rangers
Chris Kreider – Mika Zibanejad – Patrick Kane
Artemi Panarin – Vincent Trocheck – Vladimir Tarasenko
Alexis Lafreniere – Filip Chytil – Kaapo Kakko
Jimmy Vesey – Barclay Goodrow – Tyler Motte
Ryan Lindgren – Adam Fox
K’Andre Miller – Jacob Trouba
Niko Mikkola – Braden Schneider
Igor Shesterkin
Jaroslav Halak
New Jersey Devils
Timo Meier – Nico Hischier – Jesper Bratt
Erik Haula – Jack Hughes – Ondrej Palat
Tomas Tatar – Michael McLeod – Dawson Mercer
Jesper Boqvist – Curtis Lazar – Nathan Bastian
Jonas Siegenthaler – Dougie Hamilton
Ryan Graves – John Marino
Kevin Bahl – Damon Severson
Akira Schmid
Vitek Vanecek
Puck drop time and where to watch
This is a 7:30 PM Eastern start. That is to stagger this with the start time of the Lightning-Maple Leafs series which has coincided this series for large parts of the postseason. We’re getting closer to the end of round one and with all 16 teams still playing, there’s a lot of hockey. MSG will cover this for the local feeds but ESPN will carry the game for those out of market and wanting to watch.