Bright playoff lights shine on Ranger rookie
A slew of big NHL names will be heading back onto playoff ice tonight with 1-0 series leads. Among them: Aleksander Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk in Florida, Connor Hellebuyck in Winnipeg and Brock Boeser in Vancouver.
Matt Rempe, too.
He’s the Rangers’ rookie whose stock is soaring. Rempe scored a goal in his playoff debut Sunday and is officially a fan favorite at Madison Square Garden.
“I can’t think of a player that’s come in and had that impact on a team, on a fan base, on a city,” Rangers coach Peter Laviolette said. “If you watch him and look at him, he just smiles. He’s just happy. Loves being here, loves to play the game. He’s been great.”
Rempe’s mother was in town, and they went out for dinner the night before Game 1. But Rempe isn’t used to making reservations, and it took about 10 tries before they found a place to eat.
He might have a little easier time getting seated now.
“Any game he’s in the lineup, he’s had an effect on the game,” forward Jimmy Vesey said.
All tonight’s games in the NHL playoffs are rematches of series-openers from Sunday, in which home teams all prevailed: The Rangers beat Washington, 4-1, Florida topped Tampa Bay, 3-2, Winnipeg won a wild one over Colorado, 7-6 and Vancouver rallied with three goals in the third to down Nashville, 4-2.
The Panthers took their first-ever series lead over Tampa Bay, and scored as many goals Sunday as they did in the entirety of the four-game sweep by the Lightning in their most recent playoff series in 2022.
“There’s going to be places where both teams are going to want to get better, and there’s going to be places that both teams are going to feel they were pretty darn good,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. “And that’s what from today to the drop of the puck is, how much can you leverage what you think you were good at and mitigate where they were good.”
The Jets-Avalanche game was the first this season — the whole season, not just playoffs — to have two separate periods where at least six goals were scored. The teams tied, 3-3, in the first, then 3-3 again in the third. The difference was Winnipeg getting the only goal of the second.
“It wasn’t exactly how we drew it up,” Jets coach Rick Bowness said. “But if that’s the way it goes, that’s the way it goes.”
Nashville had been 18-1-0 and winner of 15 straight games since the calendar flipped to 2024 when leading after two periods. But Vancouver got two goals in the third a mere 12 seconds apart, and that was how the Canucks rallied to get Game 1 of that matchup.