The New York Rangers sure did make us nervous last night. They blew two separate two goal leads against a pretty bad Toronto Maple Leafs team that has Phil Kessel playing on the fourth line. But they got a late goal from Mats Zuccarello and barely held on –the Leafs hit a crossbar late– for the 5-4 win and two big points.
This game was ugly, but it was a game the Rangers dominated from the start. There were a few defensive miscues and a bad goal allowed by Cam Talbot that gave the Leafs life, but the Leafs always gave it right back to the Rangers. Morgan Reilly almost won the game for the Leafs single-handedly, but luckily James Remier outdid Talbot with an ugly goal of his own.
This was a game where the Rangers should have gotten two points because they dominated the first two periods, but shouldn’t have gotten two points because they played horrid defense and allowed a bad team to make them work for it. Sometimes, you just take the points and run.
On to the goals:
Rangers 1, Leafs 0
The top line had a good cycle on this shift. Eventually, Rick Nash got the puck behind the net to Derick Brassard, as Dan Boyle crept in from the point. James van Riemsdyk was supposed to stick Boyle, but didn’t even put a body on him as he went right to the front of the net. Brass hit him with the pass, and Reimer stood no chance.
Rangers 2, Leafs 0
Cody Franson Kostka’d the puck as he fanned on the pass. The puck rolled to the slot, where Brass/Zucc poked it to Nash at the side of the net, who got it right back to Zucc in front with a wide open net.
Leafs 1, Rangers 2
With the Leafs on the powerplay, the puck gets poked back to the point a few ticks after the faceoff. The faceoff itself was a draw, but Tyler Bozak sent it back to the point. Franson moved the puck across to Reilly, a pass that Carl Hagelin tried to pick off and missed. With Hagelin out of the play, Reilly had half the offensive zone to walk in and rip it over Talbot.
Rangers 3, Leafs 1
Marc Staal led the rush into the zone after receiving the puck from Kevin Klein at the red line. Korbinian Holzer didn’t have his head on a swivel, and didn’t see Kevin Hayes behind him. Staal made a pretty sweet pass to hit Hayes in the backdoor for the goal.
Leafs 2, Rangers 3
Boyle shied away from contact with Bozak a bit, allowing Bozak to get the puck to Stephane Robidas at the point. Robidas wristed it, and it looked like –both on the replay and by Talbot’s reaction– it was deflected accidentally by Lee Stempniak and over Talbot. Not the best goal to give up, especially after just taking a two goal lead.
Rangers 4, Leafs 2
This was just a bad goal by Reimer.
Leafs 3, Rangers 4
Staal couldn’t keep the zone, and turned the puck over at the blue line. The ensuing rush from Toronto wasn’t necessarily dangerous, but no one picked up the trailer Reilly. He got the puck at the high slot, walked in, and had all day to tee up a shot that beat Talbot. Not many stop that one.
Leafs 4, Rangers 4
Chris Kreider turned the puck over to Daniel Winnik right outside the zone, and Winnik brought the puck back in and behind the net. Winnik tried to center the puck, and it went off Ryan McDonagh’s stick and through Talbot.
Rangers 5, Leafs 4
Hayes started this goal by forcing a turnover in the neutral zone and turning the play up the ice by hitting Dominic Moore for the zone entry. Moore blew a tire, but got the puck to Nash behind the net as Zuccarello cut to the high slot. Nash found him, and Zucc beat Reimer with a great shot.
Fenwick Chart:
Despite what Sam and Joe said on TV, the Rangers did not struggle with puck possession this game. They lost a lot of the faceoffs, but dominated puck possession, up until they turtled holding the lead. Winning faceoffs does not correlate to puck possession. Period. End of story. It’s a lazy narrative.
Scoring Chances:
The same goes for scoring chances. I honestly don’t know what they were talking about on TV.
Individual Corsi:
Boy did Klein and Staal have a rough game, as did that fourth line (insert Tanner Glass comment here). It’s worth noting that the Kreider-Derek Stepan-Martin St. Louis is a defensive tire fire and usually a possession black hole. They’ve been negative on a lot of these charts when together.
Shot Locations:
The Rangers didn’t really do a good job of limiting shot attempts by the Leafs.
Shift Chart:
Alain Vigneault didn’t have the benefit of last line change, but he did his best to matchup Girardi/McDonagh against the Bozak/Kessel/JVR line until it got broken up. The matchups are weird for this game, because that line is Toronto’s third line now. Kadri/Winnik/Santorelli is actually Toronto’s first line, and it drew Staal/Klein (when AV could match up), which may explain why that duo had such a rough game. Toronto messed with its lines throughout the game, so it’s tough to gauge which particular players AV was trying to match up on.
As mentioned above, you sometimes take two points and run far away. This was the first of three very winnable games in which the Rangers really need all six points. They are off to a good start, and now travel west for games against Colorado and Arizona, two non-playoff teams.
GIFs courtesy of /u/Grizzy19.
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