The New York Rangers came into the 2022-23 season with heightened expectations. A young core of top-flight talent and savvy veterans were expected to mesh even better than last year’s Stanley Cup Playoff run.
Through two games, the Rangers might appear to be even better than initially thought.
Artemi Panarin tallied three points in the first period alone and Igor Shesterkin saved 33/36 shots and the Rangers beat down the Minnesota Wild 7-3 Thursday night.
“I feel good tonight. The guys played well and it’s nice to see the scoring spread out throughout the team.” head coach Gerard Gallant said after the game.
The scoring began early and often for New York. After a few brilliant saves from Shesterkin, the Rangers went on the powerplay and Chris Kreider scored on an excellent pass from Mika Zibanejad to start with a 1-0 lead.
Crisp passing was the name of the game for the Rangers throughout the contest. After successfully killing a penalty in the first period, and not being able to score on a second powerplay, Artemi Panarin and Alexis Lafreniere found Adam Fox for his first goal of the season to give the Rangers a 2-0 lead with four minutes left in the first period. Lafreniere and Panarin later teamed up for a score late in the first period to stretch the lead to 3-0.
Lafreniere totaled two points in the win, both coming from excellent assists.
“I try to play my game on a different side. Just play as hard as you can and try to make plays. I’m with two really good players.” Alexis Lafreniere said after the game.
Minnesota would battle back in the second period with Matt Zuccarello scoring on a powerplay to cut the Wild deficit to two. But after not scoring on a key five-on-three, the Rangers would strike late in the second period when Filip Chytil scored off an Adam Fox rebound to go up 4-1 after two.
The Wild would not go away in the third period though. Four combined goals were scored in a span of two minutes midway through the third with Matt Boldy scoring twice for Minnesota.
Yet Vincent Trocheck scored his first goal as a New York Ranger, and Kaapo Kakko got on the stat sheet with an unassisted goal of his own to pull away 6-3.
A late second goal from Chris Kreider off a K’Andre Miller shot ended the scoring at 7-3 and the Rangers coasted the rest of the way.
New York entered their first road game of the season against a Minnesota Wild team that had a franchise-high 113 points last year. With the most wins on the road of any team in the NHL, New York continued to show their dominance away from Madison Square Garden.
The Rangers open the season 2-0 for the first time since 2019-20 and have their first back-to-back night Friday when they play the Winnipeg Jets. Puck drop is set for 8:00 pm – ET.
Rangers Game Notes
- Vincent Trochek’s impact on the team has been felt through face-off wins, hard defense, and solid puck management, but the former Hurricane recorded his first two points and a goal as a New York Ranger. Trocheck was also 5-9 on face-off wins as well. His impact has been major.
- The second line of Artemi Panarin-Vincent Trocheck-Alexis Lafreniere attributed to eight points on the night. The injury to Vitali Kravtsov pushed Lafreniere up to the second line and the Rangers saw immediate production. “That line was real good tonight. They made some great plays.” Gerard Gallant said of the group after the game.
- Tonight was the first multi-point game of the season for Panarin. He was 8th in the NHL last season with 28 games with 2+ points. It was the 61st three-point game since 2015-16 which is the third-most in the NHL (McDavid, Draisaitl) in that span per Rangers Stats and Info Twitter account.
- Sammy Blais did not play in Thursday night’s contest but could make his debut for the Rangers Friday night against Winnipeg on the second night of a back-to-back according to reports. Blais missed the first two games with an upper-body injury.
