Rangers rally past rival Devils to extend point streak to 11 games
The Devils have spent a majority of their season clawing for wins in the third period, but the final 20 minutes of the season’s first Battle of the Hudson belonged to the Rangers.
After trading goals through roughly 51 minutes of a neck-and-neck game between last season’s first-round playoff foes, the Blueshirts ultimately scored three times in the final frame to flex a 5-3 win over the Devils on Saturday night at Prudential Center.
The victory extended the Blueshirts’ point streak to 11 games, which is the club’s longest stretch of success since 2015.
“I’ve been impressed all year with how we’ve stuck with games and kept ourselves in it,” said Jimmy Vesey, who scored his second goal of the night with 2:49 left in regulation to give the Rangers a 4-3 lead. Blake Wheeler later sealed it with an empty-netter.
Sure, the Rangers have been a strong third-period team to start the season, having given up the second-least amount of goals in the final frame in the NHL entering Saturday’s slate of games.
The common denominator to the Rangers’ success this season, however, is not their third-period play, a stylistic change or a any one aspect of their game.
His name is Artemi Panarin.
Panarin jump-started the Rangers’ third-period push with his second goal of the night, a crucial game-tying score off a quick shot on a loose puck that trickled out of the faceoff dot, to knot the game at three-all.
“He’s been playing so hard and so good,” head coach Peter Laviolette said of Panarin, whose 15-game point streak to start the season set a new franchise record.
The last Ranger to have points in 15 straight games was none other than Wayne Gretzky in 1996-97.
Panarin is also just the fourth undrafted player in the last 30 years to record a point streak of at least 15 games, joining Adam Oates, Pascal Dupuis and Gretzky.
Quite simply, the Rangers don’t notch 12 wins through their first 15 games of the season — the most in franchise history — without the consistent contributions of Panarin.
“He’s been pretty ridiculous,” Vesey said of the star Russian wing. “He’s just been a special player for us and a difference-maker.”
The Rangers and Devils exchanged two goals each in the opening period, in which the home team, already down a forward and skating with an extra defenseman, lost winger Tomas Nosek after a big hit from Jacob Trouba.
There was a healthy dose of bumps and bruises exchanged throughout the contest in the aftermath of the Devils’ valiant comeback in their seven-game series victory over the Rangers in the first round of last spring’s playoffs.
That led to the Rangers’ 1-for-3 showing on the power play and the Devils’ capitalizing on their lone man-advantage opportunity.
After Panarin opened the scoring with his second power-play goal of the season, the Devils tied it up on a bizarre play just 48 seconds later.
Jack Hughes’ turnaround shot trickled through Rangers goalie Igor Shesterkin and in, but the refs whistled the play dead and waved the goal off.
Upon review, the refs ruled they blew the whistle too soon and that it was a good goal.
Officiating hasn’t swung in the Rangers’ favor lately. They’ve found themselves on the wrong end of a lot of calls, especially as it pertains to goals, both good and disallowed.
Hughes’ no-goal-turned-goal Saturday was just the first strange sequence, which Laviolette said he thought was called correctly.
In the second period, Michael McLeod landed a high hit on Ryan Lindgren that the referees initially called a five-minute major.
By whistling for a major, it gave the officials an opportunity to review the call and, if need be, change it.
Upon review, once again, the Rangers listened to the call swing in their opponents’ favor when it was determined there was no infraction at all.
“Nothing you can do,” Vesey said. “I’ve never seen some of those calls, but it is what it is. We just put our head down and kept going.”
