Barclay Goodrow struck at 14:01 to give the New York Rangers a tension-filled 2-1 overime win over the Florida Panthers at Madison Square Garden in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Final, evening the series at a game apiece.
As expected, the Rangers started fast and former Panther Vincent Trocheck opened the scoring at the 4:12 mark. Full credit to the Rangers for manufacturing the goal, but a lot had to go right for it happen.
New York gained the offensive zone when Artemi Panarin dished off to Trochek after taking a pass from Erik Gustafsson’s pass. Trocheck’s subsequent crossing pass was intercepted by Carter Verhaeghe. Unfortunately for Verhaeghe, Alexis Lafrenière was nearby and knocked him to the ice, allowing Adam Fox to pick up the puck and feed a now wide-open Trocheck back door for the Rangers’ first of the series. Why was Trocheck open? When he made the crossing pass, his stick came up and hit Gustav Forsling in the face, knocking him to the ice as well.
After the Panthers settled in, Verhaghe would pull the goal back with a 1:51 left in the frame and Goodrow off for interference. Anton Lundell went back up the boards to Sam Bennett, who dropped to Verhaeghe up high. Verhaeghe moved in, toe-dragged Alex Wennberg and then beat Igor Shesterkin with a low shot, taking advantage of a great screen set by Evan Rodrigues.
That would be the last goal until Jacob Trouba’s aerial pass from deep in own end sent his team the other way. While the Panthers looked to be in good shape defensively, the Rangers came up big to get the win. Goodrow knocked Trouba’s pass out of the air, moved it to Trocheck and he saucered a centering feed back to Goodrow, who sniped Sergei Bobrovsky, with a hunching Brandon Montour trying in vain to block the shot. Game over, man. Game over.
Although they didn’t play as well as they did in Game 1, the Panthers played well enough to win. Unfortunately, they just couldn’t produce another goal over the final 55-plus minutes of action, wasting another stellar performance from Bobrovsky and the penalty-killing crew. Aleksander Barkov rang the puck off Shesterkin’s stick and the iron after working a beautiful give-and-go down low with Vladimir Tarasenko late in the second period. Shesterkin came up with a big stop on Lundell and then Barkov would later set up Sam Reinhart, who continues to misfire, in the goal mouth, only to see the puck lifted wide in the third. Just one of those nights. The Cats have to generate more high-quality chances and make things more difficult for Shesterkin, instead of letting him see so many one-and-done situations. Game 3 will be tomorrow afternoon in Sunrise.
Bulls & Bears
- Barclay Goodrow’s goal ended Florida’s amazing run of eleven-straight overtime wins. The last time the Panthers lost in overtime was April 24, 2016 to the New York Islanders at Barclay’s Center. Kinda weird…
- Goodrow is now up to four postseason goals after accounting for just four goals in 80 regular season games. It was his second game-winner of the playoffs.
- Igor Shesterkin and Sergei Bobrovsky put on a fine display of goaltending to earn Second and Third star honors, respectively. Shesterkin stopped 26 shots while Bobrovsky finished with 28 saves.
- Ryan Lomberg registered a game-high five shots and was one of four Panthers (Niko Mikkola, Aaron Ekblad and Sam Bennett were the others) to be credited with four hits.
- After setting the tone and enjoying a productive Game 1, Matthew Tkachuk was the quite the opposite in Game 2. He did have three hits, but only generated one shot and wasn’t very noticable out there.
- For the other side of Game 2, go ahead and bite the Big Apple at Blueshirt Banter. Don’t mind the maggots, uh-huh.