Georgiev tallies 3rd career shutout
Assistant coach Lindy Ruff has been working on the New York Rangers’ penalty-killing the last two weeks. His efforts are paying off in a big way.
Alexandar Georgiev stopped 33 shots for his third career shutout and the Rangers scored two shorthanded goals while killing off eight New Jersey power plays in a 4-0 win over the Devils on Saturday.
New York limited New Jersey to seven shots on goal in its 15 minutes with the man advantage. Since giving up seven power-play goals on 11 chances in losses at Tampa Bay and Florida this month, the
Rangers have allowed just four in 29 chances the last seven games.
“Certainly not the way you draw up winning the hockey game, taking that many penalties and having that many penalty minutes to kill,” coach David Quinn said. “Just so proud of our guys, the way we found a way to win. Really gutted it out, stood tall on our penalty kill.
“We went through a stretch where our penalty kill was really hurting us. … Give Lindy a lot of credit. He’s worked awfully hard at it and our guys have really responded.”
New York improved to 4-0-1 in its last five games. Mika Zibanejad had a goal and an assist, and Jesper Fast, Adam Fox and Brady Skjei also scored.
Georgiev had 11 saves in the first, 10 in the second and 12 in the third to get New York’s first shutout of the season.
“When you look at it 4-0 and you kill that many penalties, your goalie needs to be good and he was good when he needed to be,” Quinn said. “Georgie had a big part in this win, that’s for sure.”
Mackenzie Blackwood had 19 saves for New Jersey, which lost for the fourth time in six games.
“There’s not much to be said,” the Devils’ Taylor Hall said. “It was a huge special teams game and their (power play) got one on a limited number of chances and we got zero, and then outscored by two. It’s unacceptable.”