FIGHTING BACK
Blueshirts surge late to cook Ducks, end ,mini-skid
ANAHEIM, Calif. — Only time will tell if the Rangers’ strong start was a fluke or if the last month or so has been the aberration.
But Sunday’s 5-2 win over the Ducks proved the Rangers still have resilience in their DNA and still can play with heart after the club furiously rallied from an early two-goal deficit to end a two-game skid in front of a split crowd at Honda Center.
The way a majority of the game went had Ducks fans cheering like their club was the third best team in the NHL as opposed to one that’s sitting third-to-last in the NHL.
But when push came to shove, the Blueshirts turned it on in the final frame and scored four unanswered goals (including an empty-netter) to steal the win.
“The win was hard,” head coach Peter Laviolette said. “I thought we were controlling most of the game, but that doesn’t matter. You find yourself down one, down two, just not the start that you wanted. They had a couple chances and they scored on them. The resiliency I think just to stay in there and keep working and keep pushing. It wasn’t easy.”
Will Cuylle deserves a bulk of the credit for sparking his team. Not only did the rookie net the equalizer and draw the penalty that led to Artemi Panarin’s goahead power-play goal, but Cuylle was the motor of the team’s most effective line all night with Jonny Brodzinski and Blake Wheeler.
It was clear that Laviolette called for more bodies at the net and Cuylle delivered in full.
The third-period rally — which also featured a breakaway shot and rebound goal from Chris Kreider and an empty-net goal from Jimmy Vesey — can be boiled down to Cuylle’s initial efforts.
“Cuylle played an awesome third period and, I would say, the whole game,” Panarin said. “Young guy who tries hard every night, it’s nice to see.”
The Rangers labored through more than 37 game minutes until they were able to finally break through and cut the Ducks lead to 2-1. It came on the power play — which had only scored two goals in the previous five games — when Kreider took a puck off the end boards and set up Vincent Trocheck.
Up until that point, however, the Rangers’ mounting frustrations began to spill out onto the ice a bit.
They looked indecisive and unsure of themselves at times after they fell behind 51 seconds into the game. And when Adam Henrique jammed in his second goal of the night toward the end of the opening frame, the Rangers seemed to just be picking up where they left off in Vegas and Los Angeles.
It prompted Laviolette to jumble his lines by the second period, which ultimately had the desired effect as the Rangers stormed back in the third.
Kaapo Kakko also didn’t take his first shift of the second period until more than half the period had gone by. When he finally got out on the ice during five-on-five play, his second and last shift of the middle frame, the Finnish wing had been demoted to the fourth line.
Laviolette chalked it up to the special-teams battle in the middle frame and just the way the rotation went.
“It’s one of those games, one of those periods, when you just have to find a way to reset,” Mika Zibanejad said. “Try to battle back and not feel sorry for yourself. That’s something that the whole team, the whole group, did a good job of, just staying with it.”