NY Rangers goal breakdown: Track meet with Toronto ends with overtime win

The Rangers and Leafs put on a show for all of us, putting together a fun speed game that resulted in a good amount of chances and nine combined goals. It was the Artemi Panarin, Ryan Strome, and Alex Georgiev show for the Rangers though, as all three carried the Blueshirts to a win.

Strome had two goals and two assists, Panarin had three assists, and Georgiev stopped 44 of 48 (!!) shots in the win. The Blueshirts got 38 shots in on Michael Hutchinson, so they were no slouches offensively either. On to the goals:

Rangers 1, Leafs 0

https://twitter.com/BlueSeatBlogs/status/1211079159990177792

Dmytro Timashov lost his stick, thus Brett Howden was wide open. Not much else to this.

Leafs 1, Rangers 1

https://twitter.com/BlueSeatBlogs/status/1211080264388096001

William Nylander found the seam in the box PK. The Leafs are dangerous on the powerplay. Doesn’t help that both defensemen are behind the goal line.

Rangers 2, Leafs 1

Artemi Panarin forced the turnover then slid the puck under the sliding defenseman, and Ryan Strome just had to finish.

Rangers 3, Leafs 1

What a shot by Strome. Wow.

Rangers 3, Leafs 2

And what a shot by Auston Matthews.

Rangers 4, Leafs 2

Chris Kreider forced the turnover in the defensive zone then led Mika Zibanejad for the rush. Zibanejad’s fake led to Frederik Andersen opening up and Zibanejad slid the puck through him.

Rangers 4, Leafs 3

Tony DeAngelo put Howden in a bad position with an ill advised pass in the neutral zone, and that led directly to this goal. A bunch of deflections didn’t help either.

Rangers 4, Leafs 4

Matthews with another rocket, but this one goes off Ryan Lindgren’s stick. It was a 6-on-5 here so there wasn’t much of a breakdown defensively other than the unfortunate deflection.

Rangers 5, Leafs 4

Another amazing pass from Panarin and Sam butchered this call so bad.

Shot Heatmap

This was close after two, but the Leafs poured it on in the third and eventually got the equalizer. They were shooting from all over the place.

Skater Results

This is basically what you expect to see in a track meet. What’s interesting here is that the Leafs were shooting from all over, so their expected-goals was actually fairly low. They focused on quantity over quality, which is why the left chart (CF%) has everyone in “fun” and xGF% (right chart) has everyone in “dull.” Just a fun game.

The Rangers have now taken four points from playoff teams, which is what you want to see. They’ve played well this month. Not perfect, but well. They get a much deserved two days off before closing out 2019 in Edmonton.