Rangers win 4th straight
Neal Pionk couldn’t ever remember scoring on an end-to-end rush before.
The 23-year-old defenseman got the tiebreaking goal on a sensational individual effort late in the third period, and the Rangers rallied to beat the Canadiens, 5-3, Tuesday night for their fourth straight victory.
“That was a good one,” Pionk said.
He brought the puck from behind the Rangers net, spun around one Montreal player, skated up the left side, cut in toward the front of the Canadiens net and put it past goalie Carey Price while falling to the ice with 2:44 left.
“I couldn’t believe it,” teammate Mika Zibanejad said. “I told him he doesn’t need us out there. He’s such a good skater, it’s incredible to see.”
Zibanejad and Chris Kreider each collected a goal and an assist, Tony DeAngelo and Pavel Buchnevich also scored, and Kevin Hayes had three assists for the Rangers. Henrik Lundqvist made 31 saves.
The Rangers trailed, 3-1, early in the second period before scoring the last four goals — three in the third.
“Real gutsy win,” Zibanejad said. “We weren’t real happy going into the third, but felt we had a little bit of momentum and we just wanted to keep that going. We did a lot of good things, and a good feeling to win.”
Zibanejad capped the scoring after he brought the puck up the left side and tried to send a pass across in front. The puck deflected back to him off Jeff Petry’s skate and Zibanejad put it past Price with 1:48 to go.
Tomas Tatar scored two goals and Max Domi also scored for Montreal, which was 7-3-1 in its last 11 games — including a shootout win across town against the Islanders the previous night. Brendan Gallagher and Petry each notched two assists, and Price stopped 27 shots.
“We made a lot of mistakes,” Canadiens coach Claude Julien said. “As a group, we weren’t very good. We couldn’t have been that tired.”