First Period:
Second Period:
- Blake Lizotte (5) Assists: Cody Glass (5), Erik Karlsson (15)
- Artemi Panarin (14) Assists: Alexis Lafreniere (10), Vincent Trocheck (7)
- Artemi Panarin (15) Assists: Vincent Trocheck (8), Braden Schneider (7)
Third Period:
- Philip Tomasino (3) Assists: Michael Bunting (6), Marcus Pettersson (10)
- Reilly Smith (4) Assists: Mika Zibanejad (14), Chris Kreider (1)
- Vincent Trocheck (7) Assists: Alexis Lafreniere (11), Artemi Panarin (17)
Three Stars:
- 3: Reilly Smith
- 2: Vincent Trocheck
- 1: Artemi Panarin
Stats:
Adam Rotter:
- They needed this one. After the day that they had, they need ed this one and while the Pens did tie it in the third they found a way.
- The Rangers were led by their big guys tonight. Artemi Panarin and Vincent Trocheck had three points, Alexis Lafreniere had two and the Chris Kreider, Mika Zibanejad, Reilly Smith line scored the winner. Smith was buzzing against his former team and that whole line looked like it had some extra jump. You want the Rangers to shore things up defensively, but they still need to put the puck in the net and hopefully tonight can get the top guys going.
- But when the Penguins did tie it in the third there was that feeling of dread that you could feel. Luckily each time the Penguins scored the Rangers were able to answer back quickly. There is still a trust and benefit of the doubt that this team needs to earn back, a feeling that things won’t snowball and that they will be resilient and find a way. Hopefully tonight is the start of that.
- We’ll see what happens next after all that happened today. I didn’t really think that the Rangers could move Jacob Trouba during the season and they did and did so without retaining any salary. He wanted to shake things up and removing the Captain certainly did that. I’d guess that Drury will continue talking to teams but may hold off on anything else until he sees how things develop the next little while. If things get better and the Rangers best players play that way then further subtraction may not be needed. If things don’t get better, then we’ll see.
- It’s Seattle on Sunday, Chicago on Monday and then the Sabres on Wednesday.