rangers blue jackets stepan

AP Photo/Frank Franklin II

In the first game following the trade deadline, the focus was on Eric Staal. But it was the Rangers backup goaltender that stole the show for the Rangers in a dramatic 2-1 win over the Blue Jackets. Raanta made 26 saves, many of them very difficult, including one as time expired to preserve the win. Joonas Korpisalo for the Jackets was equally up to the task, stopping 21 shots, also many of them difficult. It was a goalie show in an otherwise relatively boring game.

Derek Stepan partially bailed out Dan Girardi in this one, faking Korpisalo out of his pants for a shorty with under three minutes remaining. Girardi had an awful gaffe that led to the Cam Atkinson goal, but was part of that brilliant PK shift that simply didn’t allow a zone entry, which led to the goal. Stepan scored, but that shift was what the Rangers need to do on the penalty kill.

As always, you can view the full videos on our video page here. All GIFs are on nyrgifs.comfiltered under the date of the game. On to the goals:

Rangers 1, Jackets 0

Joonas Korpisalo wants this one back. Mats Zuccarello simply just threw it to the front, and it went off Korpisalo’s blocker and through him for the goal.

Jackets 1, Rangers 1

atkinson goal

Cam Atkinson picked off Dan Girardi’s pass and just took it all the way down for the breakaway goal, getting his own rebound.

Rangers 2, Jackets 1

This was a brilliant penalty kill. The team did a phenomenal job on this shift pressuring the puck carrier and denying a clean zone entry. Ryan McDonagh stepped up at the blue line and chip the puck away, where Derek Stepan picked it up for a breakaway. He faked Korpisalo out of his pants on this one.

Shot Attempts

shots

The Rangers really got outshot by the Blue Jackets all game. Raanta bailed them out a lot, especially when you look at the scoring chances and shot locations, as a lot of these shots were from good areas on the ice.

Scoring Chances

scf

The Rangers were dominated again here, which keeps to the theme of the Blue Jackets controlled most of this game, both quantity and quality.

Individual Corsi

icorsi copy

Not the best showing from a team that needed to get the process back on track. But hey Viktor Stalberg looked good.

Shot Locations

locations copy

Sticking to the shot location theme, the Rangers allowed a lot of opportunities last night. It’s no coincidence that the majority came from the right side of the ice. Girardi, Dan Boyle, and Kevin Klein all had rough games.

Shift Chart

shifts

Dylan McIlrath was put in a position to fail this game, I really have an issue with that. He looked horrible, and didn’t play in the second half of the game. Not surprising, since he was playing out of position at forward, somewhere he’s never played before. The lines were jumbled after that.

A win is a win, and that’s three in a row for the Rangers. But this is the third game in a row where process failed and they relied heavily on goaltending. This is reminiscent of the start of the season, when they went on a goaltending tear that really masked a ton of issues on the team. Now, this is a three game set that is on the tail-end of some solid play, but it is still worrisome to see this type of Ranger hockey creeping back again. Hopefully it’s short term, otherwise this team will hit another December crash.

Share: 

More About: