3 Rangers takeaways after edging Senators behind Igor Shesterkin’s brilliance
Igor Shesterkin’s teammates owe him a dinner or two on the New York Rangers next road trip.
The Rangers were outshot, outchanced and just about out-everythinged by the Ottawa Senators at Madison Square Garden pm Friday night. The only thing they weren’t was outscored – because Shesterkin stood on his head virtually from the National Anthem to the final horn, finishing with 40 saves as the Rangers held on for a 2-1 victory.
Artemi Panarin scored 3:03 into the game, and Alexis Lafreniere made it 2-0 with a power-play goal early in the third period. Adam Gaudette’s goal at 12:28 of the third period was the only one of Ottawa’s 89 shot attempts to find the back of the net.
The rest of the night belonged to Shesterkin, who helped the Rangers kill all five Ottawa man advantages – no mean feat against a team that entered the night as the League’s No. 2 power play (42.9 percent).
You could make the case that the Rangers were every bit as bad against the Senators as they were three nights earlier in a 5-3 road loss to the Washington Capitals, when they were outshot 46-19 and out-attempted 84-49. On Friday, the shot attempts were 89-34, and the Rangers were outshot 20-5 in the third period. Shesterkin did get some help from his teammates, who blocked 25 shots, but the 28-year-old improved his case for being the highest-paid goalie in NHL history.
It was the 15th time in his career that Shesterkin has made 40 or more saves; the Rangers are 13-1-1 in those games.
“He’s the best goalie in the League, and we’re lucky to have him,” Lafreniere said, “but we don’t want to give him that much work.”
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3 takeaways from Rangers 2-1 win against Senators
Here are three key takeaways from the game Friday.
1. “Igor! “Igor”
Every “Igor” chant from the sellout crowd at the Garden was well-deserved. Shesterkin basically stole two points for his team. He was as sharp as any goalie in any NHL game this season, stopping first shots, limiting rebounds and battling through the traffic in front of him.
Even his teammates appreciated that they were watching a special performance.
“Just spectacular,” defenseman K’Andre Miller said. “Everybody’s sitting there on the bench just praying that he somehow makes another one of those saves, and he just keeps doing it. Obviously, we’d like to clean up our defense a little bit, but we love who we’ve got back there.”
His most spectacular save came late in the second period, when he robbed Claude Giroux from point-blank range, then stared him down. He also made three saves in a two-second span during a power play midway through the third period, one on Brady Tkachuk and two on Josh Norris.
“Those saves on the power play, that was crazy,” Lafreniere said.
2. A win is a win, but …
Yes, the Rangers skated off the ice at the Garden with two more points. But they’re playing with fire. After filling the net in their first six games, the Rangers have been outscored 10-8 in splitting their past four games.
More alarming is that they’ve been outshot in all four — and badly outshot and outplayed in their past two.
“It’s nice to have a goaltender that can make those saves, but that’s not what we’re looking for,” coach Peter Laviolette said. “It’s great that he’s on point, but we’ve still got to do a better job.”
The Senators kept the Rangers pinned in the defensive zone for much of the second period. They ended up outshooting New York 13-4 and had a 19-3 advantage in scoring chances, as per Natural Stat Trick.
“At one point there in the second period, I didn’t like it all,” Laviolette said. “I thought we stopped skating. Just gave them too many chances.”
The Rangers have split two games this week in which they were dominated. Without Shesterkin, they’d have been run out of the building twice.
“We know we can play better,” Lafreniere said. “‘Shesty’ was unreal again. He made some massive saves for us, and I don’t think we were that good defensively. We get two points, but we all know we can play better, for sure.”
3. Lots more needed from top-six forwards
The line of Panarin, Vincent Trocheck and Lafreniere produced the first goal off a quick turnover, and Lafreniere got the second with the No. 2 power-play unit. Otherwise, the top-six forwards were nearly invisible.
The Panarin-Trocheck-Lafreniere trio had more giveaways (eight) than shots on goal (seven). The ostensible No. 1 line of Mika Zibanejad between Chris Kreider and Reilly Smith produced three shots on goal and gave the puck away four times. In all, they combined for half of the Rangers’ 24 giveaways.
That’s not a formula for winning hockey games on a consistent basis.
“We all know we played a little too much defense tonight,” Lafreniere said. “We have skills in the room. We all want to play offense, so that’s not where we want to be. We’ve got to just be a little better and a little stronger in battles.”
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