mats zuccarello

The Rangers played an all around solid hockey game last night, besting the Anaheim Ducks by a score of 4-1. It wasn’t a perfect game by any stretch, but the Rangers got timely goals, decent defense, and solid goaltending. Henrik Lundqvist was only beat once on a goal in which he stood no chance. The defense played one of their better –relatively speaking– games as well. The solid effort gave Alain Vigneault his 600th NHL win as a coach. Like him or not, that’s a solid milestone.

Three different lines got in on the action for the Rangers, showing how truly dangerous they are when their forwards are fully healthy. John Gibson did his best to try to keep the Rangers off the board, making a number of stellar saves (here and here are just two), but Hank bested him with another great performance in net. He’s been coming around lately. Perhaps just at the right time?

On to the goals:

Rangers 1, Ducks 0

This goal started with a long flip from Dan Girardi out of the zone that Jesper Fast skated down. There was some sustained pressure, and then Pavel Buchnevich made a great pass to Oscar Lindberg in the slot. Buch looked up before turning his back to the net and making the backhand pass. Also not sure what Cam Fowler was doing here. It was job to protect the slot when his partner (Kevin Bieksa) challenged Buchnevich.

Rangers 2, Ducks 0

Brady Skjei made a good pinch to keep the play alive. His pass to Chris Kreider in front deflected to the weak side, where Mats Zuccarello put it over a sliding Gibson.

Rangers 2, Ducks 1

Skjei whiffed on his pass behind the net, which allowed Andrew Cogliano to skate by him and feed Jakob Silfverberg in front.

Rangers 3, Ducks 1

JT Miller made a beautiful pass to Michael Grabner, who blew by Ryan Getzlaf on his way to the net. He roofed it over Gibson’s glove, where he was robbed last period.

Rangers 4, Ducks 1

Grabner empty netter.

Even Strength Corsi

This shows what we expected. The Ducks spend large periods of time in the Rangers’ zone, and the Rangers also appeared to take a break in the second period. As I said, not a perfect effort, and you really want to see this improve, but a good effort nonetheless. The scoring chance chart is broken, but my eyes said most of these shots were not quality chances. I didn’t really notice any major defensive gaffes, but then again, I have nothing to back that up.

Hopefully this is a game the Rangers can build off as they enter a stretch where they play every other day for a while. A similar matchup awaits in Nashville on Thursday, and another performance like this is likely to net them another two points.

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