POWER RANGERS
Blueshirts extend winning streak to six
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — The Rangers are hitting their offensive stride at the right time.
They picked up their sixth win in a row Wednesday night, 6-4 over the Canucks at Rogers Arena, to continue their offensive resurgence. The Rangers have an eye-popping 18 goals in their last three games and 31 goals during their win streak.
The outpouring of goals is an encouraging sign and has allowed them to keep pace behind the Hurricanes and Devils in the Metropolitan Division. The recent scoring surge has been necessary, considering they also have allowed 17 goals over the past six games.
The Rangers were expected to have an easy time putting the puck away since they were facing Vancouver’s rookie goalie, Arturs Silovs, who was making his NHL debut. And they did. They scored six goals or more for the third game in a row and the 11th time this season.
Nevertheless, they let the Canucks hang around by way of questionable defense at times and an off-night from goalie Igor Shesterkin. It was a similar story to the last time the Rangers faced the Canucks, when they beat them 4-3 last week at the Garden. On Wednesday, Shesterkin stopped 25 of the 29 shots he faced, but the Rangers gave the Canucks too much to work with.
Still, the Rangers have been able to make up for their defensive shortcomings by acting as a force with the puck.
“We can always look at the defensive side and say we need to clean up this and that,” said Mika Zibanejad after he and Artemi Panarin each scored two goals and dished out one assist. “I mean, they can score as well. But at the same time, we want to clean it up. It’s a lot easier to talk about it and try to be a little bit more positive around it.
“We’re obviously scoring a lot of goals, we’re winning games. We’re trying to find a message where we don’t have to sacrifice offense to play defense, or be better defensively. At the same time, I think we just clean it up a little bit and we’re still going to get our chances if we play like we can and the way we want to.”
In the aftermath of his four-goal game Saturday at Carolina and the Rangers’ recent acquisition of his friend and compatriot, Vladimir Tarasenko, Panarin said he felt he was at a different level. He showed it Wednesday night. After scoring two goals in the first period, Panarin has six goals in the past two games and is riding a fivegame point streak, over which he has collected 11 points.
Panarin blasted a onetimer off a feed from Jimmy Vesey to make it 2-1 Rangers just seven minutes into the game, then later tipped a Niko Mikkola shot from the top of the zone to give the Rangers a 3-2 lead heading into the second period.
The new-look top line of Chris Kreider, Zibanejad and Tarasenko threatened all night long, flying up and down the ice and totaling three goals. Zibanejad notched a first-period tally before threading a tape-to-tape pass to Kreider, who buried his 251st goal as a Ranger to surpass Mark Messier for seventh-most goals in franchise history, 50 seconds into the second period for a 4-2 lead.
After defenseman K’Andre Miller scored with less than seven minutes to go in the second period to give the Rangers a two-goal cushion to start the third, Vancouver’s
Andrei Kuzmenko scored with just over 11 minutes left in regulation to keep the Canucks within a goal. His shot from between the top of the circles whizzed right past Shesterkin’s glove, the type of shot the Russian netminder usually stops.
Zibanejad scored an empty-netter with 1:34 left to close it out for the Rangers.
“We’ve all talked about how good we feel about ourselves right now,” Vesey said. “Tonight wasn’t perfect by any stretch. With that, we had a few days off here, some travel, so we’ll take the two points and regroup for the last two games here.”