The New York Rangers defeated the Boston Bruins tonight by a score of 5-2. For a box score, click here.
More highway robbery by the Rangers tonight. Not a lot of jump in the legs of the visitors.
One of my points in the Gameday Thread was the ineptitude of the Boston power play. It was worse than I thought it was. Not only did Boston do absolutely nothing with the man advantage, they allowed the Rangers to score twice shorthanded thanks to poor backchecking on Stepan’s goal and defensive coverage on the Hayes goal.
Raanta saved the Rangers bacon on a few occasions with an assist from Girardi on a loose puck in the crease while the Rangers were protecting a two goal lead early in the third period. He’s been so good for the Rangers this season, that when the bulk of the back to back games come later on this season, the drop off in play is nil.
I think we saw for the first time this season what is going to happen when the Rangers don’t play “fast” for 60 minutes. They turned the puck over frequently, lost board battles in the Bruins end and allowed Boston skaters to get in front of Raanta. The Rangers probably lose tonight to a better team.
However, it wasn’t all bad with Pavel Buchnevich, who finally potted his first NHL goal with a absolute bomb short-side past Rask to give the Rangers a three goal cushion in the third. Hopefully this gets the monkey off his back and boosts Buch’s confidence moving forward. Because the Rangers scoring nearly 5 a night thus far don’t have enough depth.
Grabner’s torrid goal scoring pace continued tonight with late insurance after Pastrnak’s tip in front gave the Bruins some life with 5 minutes to go in the third. I believe that as of this writing he’s still tied for the league lead in even strength goals but we’ll see where we are in the AM.
I’ve trashed Nick Holden a bunch on here and on twitter, but it was good to see him score one, albeit somewhat a weak goal by Rask. These plays will come if he manages to find the offensive zone more often. Ever since getting paired with Marc Staal, his game as slowly gotten better and he was rewarded tonight. Holden has points in 3 of his last 4.
The Rangers need a better showing and hopefully they’ll bring it tomorrow night with the Winnipeg Jets in town.
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