First Period:
- Will Cuylle (11) (Power Play) Assists: Jacob Trouba (19), K’Andre Miller (17)
Second Period:
- Sam Reinhart (43) (Power Play) Assists: Aleksander Barkov (46), Carter Verhaeghe (34)
- Sam Reinhart (44) Assists: Aleksander Barkov (47), Gustav Forsling (20)
- Chris Kreider (31) (Power Play) Assists: Vincent Trocheck (37), Artemi Panarin (50)
Third Period:
- Ryan Lomberg (5) Assists: Gustav Forsling (21)
- Anton Lundell (9) (Empty Net) Assists: Oliver Ekman-Larsson (17)
Stats:
Adam Rotter:
- This was a close game, but Florida was better, especially as the game went on and especially in the third period.
- The Rangers just seemed to lack that extra gear tonight that the Panthers seemed to have. The Rangers weren’t bad, but they struggled with the Florida pressure, speed and defense. The Panthers really locked it down in the third period and limited the Rangers to not much more than that one really good shift from Mika Zibanejad, Chris Kreider and Kaapo Kakko.
- They didn’t score, but that shift showed what that trio could be. It was the first time in a bit that Mika Zibanejad looked as dynamic as we know he can be and if he can get back to that a bit more then it would matter nearly as much who is the third guy on that line.
- Chris Kreider did score, but the Panthers best players definitely had the edge over the Rangers top players tonight.
- It also stinks that the Rangers lost this game off a little floater that may or may not have gone off of Jacob Trouba and that Igor Shesterkin may or may not have seen all the way. It’s one that he’s got to stop and that he has been stopping, along with much tougher shots, for the past month or so.
- It was a playoff-style game against a potential Eastern Conference Final opponent. You could see some potential issues with how Florida was defending and pressuring the Rangers into some mistakes and how they weren’t able to go up a level to really push to tie it. Florida is a good team, but the Rangers will need to beat good teams if they want to go far in the playoffs and they will need to play a smarter, simpler, and grinding game to win games like this.
- Now we wait and see how different the roster looks on Saturday against St. Louis. There is a lot of buzz around Alex Wennberg since Seattle took him out of the lineup to protect him from injury. Wennberg would certainly make the Rangers a deeper team and give them a solid player to help solidify the third line. He has never scored to the level that was expected, but he’s a solid two-way player and better than anyone the Rangers have had in that spot since Filip Chytil went down.