10:44PM: Henrik Lundqvist said on MSG, “we all need to understand how important this stretch is for next year, that we understand how important it is, how we should play in a tie game. The decisions we make with and without the puck and we create habits for a lot of these guys that haven’t played that many games. It’s important that we try to take each game as a big, important game. There was a lot of good, puck management at times hurt us. Going down the stretch, creating good habits, understanding what it takes to win games. It’s been hard for us to win games but we have to continue with the positives here.”
10:23PM: 1st Period
08:43 New York Pavel Buchnevich (14) ASST: Brett Howden (12), Brendan Lemieux (3) 1-0
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2nd Period
05:46 Detroit Tyler Bertuzzi (16) ASST: Madison Bowey (6), Andreas Athanasiou (18) 1-1
3rd Period
06:15 Detroit Andreas Athanasiou (23) ASST: Danny DeKeyser (11) 1-2
14:29 New York Pavel Buchnevich (15) ASST: Brendan Lemieux (4), Tony DeAngelo (21) 2-2
OT Period
No Scoring
Shootout:
- Frans Nielsen: Stopped
- Mika Zibanejad: Stopped
- Andreas Athanasiou: SCORES
- Tony DeAngelo: Stopped
- Tyler Bertuzzi: Stopped
- Pavel Buchnevich: Stopped
Stats:
- 0-2-4 in the last six is a strange little stretch but I think it continues to encompass who the Rangers are and where they are. They work hard and they are in games but they aren’t good enough and don’t have enough good players, yet, to win these games.
- We’ve seen these flashes by Pavel Buchnevich before, so this stretch needs to taken with a grain of salt, but he looks engaged, he’s shooting the puck and, when he plays like he does tonight, looks like he could be a major factor going forward. He’s responded to how David Quinn has been coaching him and hopefully he is, finally, on his way to finding consistency and being a top-six mainstay for the Rangers.
- Brett Howden had a nice game and looked a lot more like the player he was in the first two months of the season.
- Henrik Lundqvist sure hasn’t been playing as much as we are used to seeing but he was solid in net for the Rangers and probably the only reason they picked up a point.