It was a morale-boosting win and against a faith-inspiring team.
The Blueshirts, who faced a pair of tough opponents in Colorado and Tampa Bay after the All-Star break, rallied in the third period on Monday night and sent the game to overtime, but Alexis Lafrenière hit the ball 1:53 into overtime. He scored and took the score 2-2. One win over a fierce Avalanche team at Madison Square Garden.
Rangers didn’t have time to get their legs back after an eight-day suspension of play.
But once they accomplished that, the Rangers turned it on to kick off the final 33 games of the season on the right foot.
“It probably wasn’t the prettiest victory,” Mika Zibanejad said. “But a courageous victory means a lot.”
The message that came to the Rangers’ locker room during the second intermission was to win the final period after trailing by one point all night.
The offensive power that had been lacking throughout the game showed up in the final 20 minutes, when Artemi Panarin wristed the top of the puck from former Ranger goaltender Alexander Georgiev to tie the game at one-all with 8:43 left in regulation. .
After being outshot in the previous two frames, the Rangers were finally able to turn the tide in their favor in the third frame.
“It was huge against a really good team in this league,” he said, receiving a drop pass from Zibanejad, pulling up and swinging the puck over Georgiev’s shoulder for the third overtime goal of his career. Lafreniere said.
The Rangers went scoreless through the first two periods, with only goaltender Jonathan Quick (32 saves) making up the one-goal deficit.
A lack of goals was a trend that befell Rangers, but a lack of quality scoring chances was something else entirely. Rangers posed little attacking threat throughout the 40 minutes, converting three dangerous chances in the first period and just one in the second.
Colorado, on the other hand, had already converted 11 dangerous chances into the second intermission.
The Rangers were constantly giving up the puck. There were very few attacks. Colorado largely took the lead.
But Quick tracked just about everything the Avalanche threw at him.
The first goal of the game didn’t come until Nathan MacKinnon, currently on a 14-game scoring streak, burst through the neutral zone and bulldozed into the Rangers zone at the end of the first period.
“Honestly, that’s on me,” head coach Peter Laviolette said of the aforementioned play. “Sometimes I wonder if I could explain it better because we knew what was going to happen. We were in position and held position, but after the event happened, We made some quick adjustments in the room to be able to deal with speed a little bit more.”
A win like this against the Central Division-leading Avalanche was crucial for a club that had barely limped into the All-Star break.
Another tough match is coming up in just a few days.
Next is Lightning.
“Colorado is a great team,” Laviolette said. “They’re fast, I mean they’re fast. And they’re deep on the line, they’re deep on defense, they’re goaltending. When you come out of the break, you pick yourself up after the break and move forward. I think it was a good way to go. We finished with a win. If we come back and put it together, it’s the start of something. We’ll try to build on it from there.”
