rangers devils

Mika Zibanejad notched his first hat trick as a Ranger (and an assist), Mats Zuccarello had three assists, and Kevin Hayes had two assists as the Rangers’ top players took the rest of the team on their backs in a 4-3 win over the Devils. Henrik Lundqvist made 19 saves in the win.

For the second straight game, the Rangers controlled the play, with a whopping 60% of the shot attempts and spending the majority of the game in the offensive zone. This was much like the game against the Flyers, except the Rangers dressed skill forwards and got skill forward production. Adding Pavel Buchnevich to the Zibanejad/Zuccarello line helped create a dominating line that the Devils could not answer.

Novel concept, dressing skill.

Devils 1, Rangers 0

https://twitter.com/NJDevils/status/1091130522988937216

Neal Pionk got stripped of the puck here, and Nico Hischier was there to collect the garbage for the powerplay goal.

Devils 2, Rangers 0

https://twitter.com/NJDevils/status/1091135871854825473

That’s Pionk again who couldn’t control the puck, and Brian Boyle took it and put one off the post. Marc Staal, who had Marcus Johanssen behind him, went to cover Boyle about 3 seconds too late –he had to finish his check, apparently– leaving Johanssen alone to dive and poke the puck into the yawning net.

Devils 2, Rangers 1

That’s a great deflection by Zibanejad. Clearly learning from Kreider.

Rangers 2, Devils 2

What. A. Pass. Zuccarello is back. And a great finish from Zibanejad.

Rangers 3, Devils 2

Zibanejad made a nice play here, and Chris Kreider gets the goal, but Keith Kinkaid wants this one back.

Rangers 3, Devils 3

This time it was a Jimmy Vesey turnover that started all this. The Rangers never recovered, and Egor Yakovlev was there for the finish.

Rangers 4, Devils 3

These two are very good.

Shot Heatmap

Look at all that white space for the Devils. Yea they are pretty terrible, but you want to see that kind of shot heatmap consistently. Not many shots from in front, and not many shots in general. That’s two games in a row we’ve seen a heatmap like this. It’s against terrible teams, but I’ll take it!

The Rangers managed to close out January with a 5-7 record, despite starting the month with five straight losses and six losses in seven. It’s a quick turnaround for the Blueshirts, who are back home to take on Montreal tomorrow. The Blueshirts don’t have two days off in a row until February 17-18. It’s going to be a rough stretch. This is what happens when you look at the March calendar, not the February calendar.

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