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Rangers finally muck it up to gut out win over Panthers

Head coach Gerard Gallant had called for the Rangers to tighten things up defensively, but defense was inadvertently the primary focus Monday night against the Panthers.

It had to be considering how Florida had them on their heels for an extended period of time in each period, but the Blueshirts still managed to come away with a 6-2 win despite being outplayed and outshot for most of the night.

The line changes made in the name of sparking the offense may not have had the exact desired effect, though they prompted a couple of greasy goals, which the Rangers haven’t produced nearly enough of this season. They created havoc in front of the net, crashed the dirty areas of the ice and found ways to put the puck away when the pretty options weren’t there.

That has been missing from the Rangers’ game lately, but it was the only way they were going to send the Panthers back to Florida with their tails between their legs. Igor Shesterkin’s 33-save performance certainly helped, as well.


Rangers
Adam Fox (c.) of the Rangers celebrates with his teammates after he scores a goal past Alex Lyon of the Panthers during the first period on Monday night.
Robert Sabo

Rangers
Adam Fox scores a goal against the Panthers on Monday night.
Robert Sabo

Adam Fox led the Rangers with three points, a goal and two assists, for his 11th multi-point game of the season. Mika Zibanejad also scored twice, the 250th and 251st goals of his NHL career, while Alexis Lafreniere scored his first goal in 17 games on one of those work-for-it sequences to make it a 4-1 game in the third period.

The Panthers, who lost Sam Bennett at the end of the second period, when his skate got tangled up with Filip Chytil and he fell into the boards awkwardly, pulled goalie Alex Lyons with over nine minutes remaining in regulation to try and spark a rally. The six-on-five edge worked once, and Aleksander Barkov made it happen after he flipped the puck over Shesterkin to cut the home team’s lead to three goals.

Gallant was able to roll three lines relatively equally in this one. The Jimmy Vesey-Vincent Trocheck-Barclay Goodrow alignment seemed to come about as a result of Gallant wanting to reunite Artemi Panarin with Zibanejad and Chris Kreider, as well as the Kid Line, but it was the unit that notched the Rangers’ first dirty goal of the night in the second period.

The Rangers created some traffic in front of the Panthers net and Vesey jammed the puck home for the 3-1 score at 15:03.

Despite putting only one shot on net through 14:33 of the first period, which Fox scored on after settling a bouncing pass from Panarin, the Rangers still had a 2-1 edge over the Panthers heading into the first intermission. Both clubs scored on the power play, with the Panthers taking advantage of the Rangers getting caught with too many men on the ice just under six minutes into the game.


Rangers
Sam Bennett of the Panthers rebounds the puck in front of Igor Shesterkin of the Rangers during the second period on Monday night.
Robert Sabo

The Rangers’ top power-play later scored its first goal since Jan. 3 after Zibanejad ripped a one-timer from his sweet spot in the left faceoff circle.

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