Alex Georgiev starts tonight against the Islanders.

He has won his last six starts.

Gerard Gallant met with the media following the win over Winnipeg and said (NYR, MSG):

• Do you want to save some of those shutouts for the playoffs, (Laugh) “No kidding. It was nice to see happen. He earned that shutout tonight, he played really well, made some key saves at key times, for sure.”
• On Shesterkin’s play recently, “It’s been 90% of the season that he’s played like that. He had one little downturn where he wasn’t Shesterkin-like, but he’s been outstanding and it’s good to see Georgie get involved in the shutouts, too and the goaltending has been real good lately for us lately, real strong. It’s great to see them get rewarded when they play like that.”

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First Period:

Second Period:

• Ryan Strome (18) (Power Play) Assists: Mika Zibanejad (50), Artemi Panarin (69)

Third Period:

• Adam Fox (11) Assists: Andrew Copp (31), Artemi Panarin (70)\

Three Stars:

• 3: Artemi Panarin
• 2: Ryan Strome
• 1: Igor Shesterkin

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Gerard Gallant met with the media following practice today and said (NYR):

• On dealing with injuries, “We’ve been fortunate, I mean, really, we’ve been pretty fortunate with injuries this compared compared to some other teams. You get a guy here or there, but, besides Sammy Blais and Kaapo was out for a while, for the most part we’ve been pretty fortunate with the injuries and we’ve got a lot of guys around. The only tough part about this one is that Kaapo was playing really well, just got back from missing eight weeks and he had 3-4 games and his last game he had two goals and played really good, so definitely disappointed for him, but, again, it’s not long-term. We fully expect him to be back, hopefully, possibly, play maybe two or three of the last games, but we expect him for playoffs.”

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Gerard Gallant met with the media following the win over Detroit and said (NYR, MSG):

• Should you rest more guys after what Lafreniere did, “good idea, huh? (laugh) He looked like he was refreshed tonight. It was good to see, sometimes it works out perfectly and tonight it was perfect.”
• On Lafreniere starting on the fourth line, “I don’t know if it’s the fourth line, I look at those two lines as both third lines, to be totally honest with you, so I wouldn’t say fourth line. I just don’t agree with that, especially if he had the goals on both of those lines, they are pretty close to each other. I wasn’t going to break up the other line, they were our best line the other night in Philly. We found a spot for him and when Kaapo went down early there were guys all over the place in those lines. I wouldn’t say that is a fourth line, for me.”
• What can you say about Kakko, “lower-body, I don’t think it’s too serious, but we are being cautious and making sure. I’ll know more tomorrow and the next day.”
• Did you sense Lafreniere’s confidence was building or did you have a conversation with him, “I definitely talked to him about it, and again, it was all about getting him refreshed. I thought, kid has played 72 games, he’s a young kid, like we talked about the day before we scratched him, it wasn’t about poor play and he came back tonight and had some good jump and he gets a goal and another beautiful goal, so he was pretty excited.”
• What did you think of the overall game, “I thought we were outstanding, managed the puck as good as we did all year long, had some great scoring chances and we played our game. We didn’t worry about who we were playing, we just went out and played our game and played it to a T and I was happy with our effort from everybody.”