NEW YORK — They needed extra time, but the Rangers are on a roll now, winners of three straight after Chris Kreider took a pass from Mika Zibanejad and scored on a breakaway with 52.8 seconds left in overtime Tuesday night to beat the Philadelphia Flyers, 1-0, at Madison Square Garden.
Kreider was at the end of a shift, with Artemi Panarin ready to jump over the boards on a line change when Zibanejad came up with the puck on a turnover and found Kreider streaking up ice at the red line. He passed it and Kreider drove right at Flyers goalie Carter Hart, cut to his backhand and tucked it in for his third goal of the season, his second in three games.
The victory lifted the Rangers to 6-3-2 on the season, and dropped the Flyers to 5-3-1. The goal came on the Rangers’ 36th shot. Philadelphia managed only 19, but Rangers goaltender Igor Shesterkin, in his best game of the season, was brilliant and stopped them all.
The Rangers had a chance to win it in regulation when their old teammate, Tony DeAngelo, was given a delay of game penalty for shooting the puck over the glass with 4:35 left in the period. Then, another former Ranger, Kevin Hayes, nearly won it with a shot from the lower left circle off a rush, but Shesterkin snatched it with his catching glove.
The Rangers dominated play through the first two periods, especially in the second, when they outshot the Flyers 14-4. They held a 23-11 shot advantage over the first 40 minutes, and that didn’t include shots from Vincent Trocheck, Zibanejad and Kreider on a shorthanded breakaway that all clanged off the post.
Early in the third period, Alexis Lafrenière was the fourth Ranger to hit iron, when he got behind Hart only to send a sharp-angle backhander across the goalmouth and off the far post just after a Rangers power play had expired at 5:04.
At the Rangers’ morning skate, coach Gerard Gallant was asked what his general impressions were of his team’s first 10 games.
“Ahh, OK,’’ he said. “We could be better, but I'm OK. The last few have been real good and we played better. But yeah, I mean if I had to rank it from 1 to 10, I'd probably put it as a 6.’’
Gallant, though, was impressed by the Flyers’ fast start.
“They work hard, they compete hard every night, they're putting pucks in the net, they're getting great goaltending,’’ he said. “So they're good, solid team.’’
Asked if he was surprised by that, Gallant conceded that he was, a little.
“It depends what you go by,’’ he said. “If you go by talent-wise, with all the injuries they’ve got, they're a little bit surprised. But I'm not surprised because Torts [new Flyers coach John Tortorella] is going to go in there and they're going to work hard and they're going to compete. And they’re physical players. They go to the net and play hard.’’
The Flyers did play hard, and that led to a scrum at the end of the second period where Flyers defenseman Travis Sanheim was called for roughing Adam Fox, and the Rangers’ Julien Gauthier was called for roughing Sanheim after he grabbed him by the throat. Ex-Ranger Hayes was called for roughing Gauthier and Ryan Lindgren, Fox’s defense partner, was given a double-minor for roughing Hayes.
All that resulted in a Flyers power play, but the Rangers killed it and kept the game scoreless.
