The Rangers collect their sixth straight win at home, extending their win streak to four as they take care of business against the Philadelphia Flyers with a 4-1 win. In what became a very front heavy outing, the Rangers wasted no time as they headed to the power play just two minutes in as a result of a Morgan Frost high sticking penalty. As the penalty dwindled, it was power play two who would get the job done. Specifically, Jacob Trouba off a rocket of a shot from the point following a pretty passing sequence between him, Kaapo Kakko and Nils Lundkvist.
It wouldn't take long for the Rangers to strike again, as we approached the halfway mark of the period, Dryden Hunt let a nice shot go following feeds from Artemi Panarin and Adam Fox to give the Rangers a two goal lead. Panarin and Fox picking up their seventeenth and eighteenth assists on the season respectively on the play. The teams would head to intermission however, the Rangers would come right back out firing on all cylinders. Chris Kreider netted his 16th of the season off a feed from Kakko for his second assist of the night that originated from Zibanejad to give the Rangers a 3-0 lead over the Flyers. Could we have a repeat of last year?
Unfortunately, the momentum pretty much died when Dryden Hunt got called for a five minute major and a game misconduct for a hit on Justin Braun that was labeled a charge. Frankly, a bit of a questionable call. You can very well make the argument that the refs made the decision based off of the result of the hit seeing as Braun was bleeding pretty badly. While I'm not sure the play warranted five and the game, it was an unfortunate play nevertheless. Ryan Reaves would serve the penalty for Hunt, the Rangers would be down a forward for the rest of the game and had a big task of killing off a major penalty.
The five minutes seemingly flew by thanks to the magical goaltending from Igor Shesterkin, who made seven saves on the penalty kill including some without a stick and with the stick of Jacob Trouba. It's moments like that where you have to sit back an realize how truly blessed Rangers fans have been when it comes to goaltending. Aside from that short bridge of time where we relied on Mike Dunham and an out-of-prime Kevin Weekes to hold down the fort, we practically went from Mike Richter to Henrik Lundqvist and now Igor Shesterkin, seamlessly.
The night would was near perfect for Igor despite Morgan Frost sliding one throw a cluster in front of the net for his first of the season to get his team on the board near the games halfway point. The Rangers just couldn't really catch wind following the penalty and the goal certainly didn't help their case. The rest of the period would be all Philly as they outshot the Rangers 16-5 by the time the buzzer rang to break for the third.
Similar to the back half of the second, the third lacked much action with a more even balance of shots. One lone penalty would come as a result of a rare mistake from Adam Fox, who just missed the top of the glass and got called for delay of game. The Flyers pulled Carter Hart in hopes of a comeback and Artemi Panarin put an end to that dream with a no look empty net goal. The Rangers settled the puck in their defensive end, the clock rang out and another win is in the books.
On top of losing Hunt, the Rangers also spent the final minutes of the third without Barclay Goodrow, who left the game for the locker room after taking a puck to the face. The consensus in post game seemed to be that he was alright therefore should hopefully be good to go for Friday. The Rangers will be back at it Friday and Saturday for another back to back stretch as they'll take one the San Jose Sharks and Chicago Blackhawks. Two very winnable games that present them with the opportunity to do some leap frogging in the standings as they are now tied with Carolina at 31 points and just behind Washington who have 33.
This back to back not only kicks off a stretch of five games in seven days, but acts as the first of three back to backs in the month of December. The Blueshirts certainly have a busy December lined up and will look to keep building off their successful start to the 2021-22 season. As we are now officially past the first quarter of the season, the Rangers are 14-4-3, with about half those losses coming in the first two weeks of the season. Overall, a pretty darn good start for this exciting group.
Chris Feldman
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