Madison Square Garden has been the Rangers’ comfort zone all season long, and that continued Wednesday night when the Blueshirts beat the Boston Bruins, 5-2, to improve their home record to an impressive 25-8-3 this season.
The win was New York’s second in a row at The Garden this week following a 1-1-1 mixed bag of a road trip out to California last week. It also lifted the Rangers into a four-point lead over the Pittsburgh Penguins for second place in the Metropolitan Division.
“Great to see how we responded after the long trip, coming home from out West is not always easy,” explained Henrik Lundqvist, who stopped 39 of 41 shots on Wednesday. “I think we all understood the seriousness of the situation right now and we need the points. It was a good game for us tonight.”
A potent power play helped key the Rangers victory on Wednesday, and the team–with Lundqvist standing out–also killed off two Bruin power plays.. Derek Stepan registered a goal and two assists while Mats Zuccarello had a goal and assist and Keith Yandle contributed a pair of gorgeous assists.
The Rangers jumped out to a 2-0 first-period lead by scoring on successive power plays three minutes apart. Zuccarello’s 24th goal of the season–seventh on the power play–opened the scoring at 8:37, and Stepan’s 17th goal made it 2-0 at 11:39.
Yandle earned the primary assist on both goals. First he skated between the circles before making a quick feed to his right where Zuccarello buried his shot past the sprawling Tuuka Rask. Then he electrified the crowd three minutes later by dancing through three Bruin penalty killers to create a 2 on 0 down low, which finished with Stepan easily converting Yandle’s pass into another power play tally.
“He’s really playing well for us right now,” head coach Alain Vigneault said of Yandle, who has a team-high 37 assists this season.
It was only the fourth time this season that the Rangers had scored a pair of power play goals in the same game. The Blueshirts power play has been effective of late, scoring eight times over the past ten games.
“It gets the group going, scoring on the power play early like that,” offered Yandle, who played a team-high 22 minutes Wednesday. “We know late in the year specialty teams have to be good; and our power play gave us a couple of big goals, and the PK came up huge, too. Those guys (Zuccarello and Stepan) did a great job of finishing. You have to give a lot of credit to them.”
Rask, who was too ill to practice Tuesday, was removed from the game after the first period and replaced in goal by Jonas Gustavsson. Derick Brassard welcomed him to the contest by blasting a slap shot over his glove and top shelf at 5:26 of the second period to make it 3-0 Rangers. Kevin Klein made the head-man pass to send Brassard in over the Bruins blue line, where he finished on the fly for his team-leading 26th goal.
The Bruins did get one back at 9:34 of the second when former Blueshirt Lee Stempniak scored from all alone in front off a Brad Marchand pass after a Ryan McDonagh turnover. Stempniak thought he had scored earlier in the game, as well, but his rebound goal at 10:55 of the first period was nullified by the Rangers successful coach’s challenge that Boston was offsides on the play.
“I don’t what’s up with Lee, if we did something bad to him while he was here, but he’s been out of control against us,” joked Lundqvist, referring to Stempniak’s four goals scored against the Rangers this season while splitting the year with the Devils and Bruins.
Boston gained more momentum with a pair of back-to-back power plays following the Stempniak goal, but an extremely sharp Lundqvist did some of his best work of the night to hold the Bruins at bay; and the Rangers skated into the second intermission holding a 3-1 lead.
Lundqvist started the third period with an incredible diving glove save along the goal line on a Stempniak rebound try, which was upheld by video review at 3:35. Three minutes later J.T. Miller potted his 20th goal of the season to up New York’s lead to 4-1.
“For a couple of games it was kind of going against us, but the last two games we’ve been getting some bounces, and you need that in such a tight game,” offered Lundqvist.
Wide-open to the left of Gustavsson, Miller buried a slick feed from Stepan and reached the 20-goal plateau for the first time in his NHL career, at the 6:32 mark of the third period.
“It was definitely a goal of mine, it’s great,” Miller said of scoring his 20th goal. “I’ll enjoy it tonight, and enjoy the win. These two points are really what count.”
Boston rookie Frank Vatrano scored at 12:06 to cut New York’s lead back down to 4-2; but Rick Nash iced it for the Blueshirts by scoring his 14th goal, into an empty net, with 2:53 remaining in regulation.
“It was a huge win for us,” said Yandle. “Especially down the stretch here, doesn’t matter who you play, you have to find ways to win; and we did a good job from start to finish tonight. I thought it was a well-played game by the whole group.”
The Rangers, who play five of their final eight games of the season on home ice, hit the road to skate against the Canadiens up in Montreal Saturday night before returning to MSG to host the Penguins on Sunday.
Jim Cerny
BlueshirtsUnited.com
(Reprinted With Permission of the New York Rangers)
