CHICAGO – Whose idea was it for the Chicago hockey team to trade Artemi Panarin, anyway?
The Rangers winger, who broke into the NHL with Chicago, and won the Calder Trophy as the Rookie of the Year back in 2015-16 while playing for them, showed his old team a thing or two Tuesday night as he scored two goals and had two assists, the first of those being his 500th career point, in leading the Rangers to a 6-2 victory in the United Center, the Rangers’ seventh straight win and 11th in their last 12 games.
The game was marred by the scary sight of Chicago forward Jujhar Khaira leaving the ice on a stretcher midway through the second period after a devastating hit by the Rangers’ Jacob Trouba. The defenseman caught an unsuspecting Khaira with his head down on a clean, but heavy hit just inside the Chicago blue line. Khaira fell straight back onto the ice and did not move for several moments, as play stopped and Ryan Strome frantically waved to the emergency crew to come onto the ice and attend to the Chicago forward.
After several minutes, Khaira was lifted onto a stretcher and wheeled off the ice and play resumed, with 13:47 left in the second period. Later, Chicago’s Riley Stillman tried to punish Trouba by fighting him. But Trouba — who also scored the first goal of the game — won the fight.
The Rangers (17-4-3) will be back in action Wednesday night at Madison Square Garden, when they face the visiting Colorado Avalanche in the second game of a back-to-back set.
Special teams were a key factor for the Rangers. They scored two power-play goals, one by Panarin and the other by Chris Kreider, and their penalty killing unit was perfect in killing four Chicago power plays. When the Rangers played in Boston the day after Thanksgiving, coach Gerard Gallant brought up the issue of faceoffs, which was a strength of the Bruins’ and a glaring weakness for the Rangers. The Rangers were tied for last in the NHL in faceoff percentage (45.2) entering Tuesday’s game, but they’ve managed to win despite that deficiency.
"There hasn't been a big issue,’’ he said that day, knocking the wooden table he was sitting behind. "I know our percentages aren't where we all want it to be, but it hasn't been an issue in scoring chances.
"We want to win more,’’ he said. "But it hasn't cost us anything yet, knock on wood.’’
But it cost them on the first two goals they allowed Tuesday.
They were up, 1-0, on Trouba’s goal 61 seconds into the game, when Filip Chytil lost a defensive zone draw to Chicago’s Dominik Kubalik. Chytil’s linemate, Julien Gauthier, actually got to the puck first, but he tried to clear it and it went directly to Chicago’s Erik Gustafsson, whose long wrist shot through traffic beat Alexandar Georgiev over the catching glove to tie the score at 1 at 1:44 of the first.
Then, Mika Zibanejad lost a defensive zone draw cleanly to Chicago’s Dylan Strome, leading to a shot by Alex DeBrincat that was blocked in front. But Kirby Dach swept in the rebound to put Chicago ahead 2-1 at 7:09.
The Rangers tied it at 2 on Panarin’s goal, a pretty play that saw all five Rangers players touch the puck, with Zibanejad passing up a slot shot and sending a pass to Panarin on the back door for his eighth goal of the season, at 3:19. And then the game was interrupted by the Khaira incident, but the Rangers took control in the third period, with four goals, including an empty-netter by Panarin with 3:10 remaining. Kreider, Kevin Rooney and Barclay Goodrow had the other Ranger goals in the period.
