Early goals hold up for Rangers
Derick Brassard and Ryan McDonough scored in the first period and Henrik Lundqvist made the goals stand up as the New York Rangers won the opener of their playoff series with the Pittsburgh Penguins, 2-1, Thursday night in New York.
The Rangers shut down Pittsburgh’s top threats, Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, for a fourth straight victory over the Penguins in the postseason.
In compiling the best record in the NHL, the Rangers finished 15 points ahead of Pittsburgh in the Eastern Conference. But after the first period, these were two very even teams, with Lundqvist and the Penguins’ Marc-Andre Fleury particularly outstanding. Lundqvist finished with 24 saves, while Fleury was far busier in making 36.
Detroit 3, at Tampa Bay 2: Pavel Datsyuk scored twice and Petr Mrazek had 44 saves in his NHL playoff debut to help the Red Wings beat the Lightning in Game 1 of their Eastern Conference series.
Datsyuk scored on two of the first four shots the Red Wings got against Tampa Bay’s Ben Bishop. Luke Glendening’s short-handed goal gave Detroit a 3-1 lead early in the third period.
Mrazek, named Detroit’s starter for Game 1 over veteran Jimmy Howard, gave up a short-handed goal to Brian Boyle in the first period and a late goal to Nikita Nesterov that enabled the Lightning to pull within 3-2.
Tampa Bay outshot the Red Wings 46-14, but went 0 for 7 on the power-play — failing to even get a shot off on the final opportunity in the closing seconds.
Minnesota 4, at St Louis 2: Jason Zucker and Matt Dumba gave the Wild a twogoal lead through two periods and Minnesota kept chances to a minimum for Devan Dubnyk in Game 1.
Jaden Schwartz and Alexander Steen scored in the third period for the Central Division champion Blues.
Dubnyk, in his playoff debut, saw only 11 shots in the first two periods, and finished with 19 saves.
Mikael Granlund’s empty-netter made it a twogoal cushion with 1:13 to go. Steen scored with 58.7 seconds left, before the Wild got another empty-net goal with 20 seconds left.