TORONTO – Every team has injuries, and these days, any team can lose a player to COVID-19 protocol.
And so, the Rangers won’t cry about not having Ryan Strome (COVID-19 protocol) and Kaapo Kakko (upper-body injury) in their lineup Monday night against the Toronto Maple Leafs. They’ll just play.
"Do I wish we had our top guys? Definitely,’’ Rangers coach Gerard Gallant said at Monday’s morning skate. "But we'll move on. We'll play the, the best we can and work hard, and it's no excuse if you're not winning games. I mean, you put your lineup together, it's an NHL lineup out there, and You might have to play a little bit different, some guys, but it is what it is.’’
When they needed someone to save them, Artemi Panarin stepped up, scoring his first goal of the season with 1:12 left in the five-minute, sudden-death overtime, to give the Rangers a 2-1 win over the Leafs and starting their four-game road trip, 2-0.
Clearly undermanned, the Rangers found a way to hang in there, mainly thanks to Igor Shesterkin, who made 40 saves, including two, officially, in the overtime, until Panarin ended it. Gallant did everything he could, changing his lines to put Panarin on Mika Zibanejad’s left wing, with Chris Kreider on the right. Zibanejad scored his first goal of the season in the first period, and he assisted Panarin on the winner.
Rangers forward Kevin Rooney had said in the morning that because the Rangers’ two previous games had come against teams they hadn’t seen in two seasons, it seems the teams spent much of the first periods of those games "feeling each other out a little bit.’’ And it seemed the same was true again Monday.
Toronto, aided by two power plays, held the slight edge in play in the first period, outshooting the Rangers 12-10. But it was the Rangers who held the lead, on a goal by Zibanejad that wasn’t given right away. Zibanejad stepped onto the ice on a line change and picked off an attempted clearing pass and fired a shot that clanged off the post and appeared to hit the crossbar and bounce out.
Play continued until there was a stoppage, and the play was reviewed on video and the goal given. It was Zibanejad’s first goal of the season, coming at 13:49 of the period, and gave the Rangers a 1-0 lead.
But the Maple Leafs began to pick things up after that, and goaltender Igor Shesterkin was called on to make some difficult saves to preserve the lead.
The lead did not hold very long into the second period. Toronto tied the score on Michael Bunting’s second goal of the season at 1:36, when he drove the net and got in behind Patrik Nemeth to jab in a shot/pass by Morgan Rielly.
The Rangers got opportunity to re-take the lead when Toronto defenseman Travis McDermott was called for tripping, but the Blueshirts’ power play -- missing Strome off the first unit and Kakko off the second -- was anemic, and produced but one shot on goal, by Sammy Blais. The Rangers got a second power play later in the period and that one produced zero shots on goal. For the game, they were 0-for-3 with the man advantage, producing two shots on goal.
Meanwhile, the Maple Leafs were peppering Shesterkin with shots, and the 25-year-old Russian was almost singlehandedly the reason the Rangers managed to escape the middle period tied, 1-1, despite being outshot 17-2 in the period.
