NEW YORK — Gerard Gallant gets questioned a lot about how often he changes up his team’s forward lines, but the Rangers coach switched the lines again for Monday night’s game at Madison Square Garden against the Florida Panthers, and everything seemed to work out perfectly for the Blueshirts.
Gallant sent four new lines out against the Panthers and three of them produced goals, including two by Mika Zibanejad, as the Rangers bounced back from a loss to Boston Thursday with a 6-2 win, their second against the Panthers this season.
Zibanejad’s first goal, which was the 250th of his career, came on the power play, and broke a 1-for-22 skid with the man advantage. Goaltender Igor Shesterkin kept the Rangers (26-14-7) in the game until they broke out with three goals in the final 25 minutes to take control. Shesterkin came inches away from scoring his first NHL goal when he fired a shot down ice with about five minutes left that just missed the left goal post.
Florida (23-21-5) had come into the game 7-2-1 in its last 10, but the Rangers jumped out to an early lead when Adam Fox (one goal, two assists) made a nifty reception of a blind pass by Artemi Panarin in the neutral zone and skated in on a breakaway against Panthers goaltender Alex Lyon. Fox cut to the backhand and slipped the puck behind Lyon for his 10th goal and 1-0 Rangers lead at 3:03 of the first period.
It was the Rangers’ only shot on goal for the first 13 or so minutes of the game, though Jimmy Vesey did hit the goal post with one effort and Kaapo Kakko missed wide by a few inches on another. The Panthers, though, controlled possession for most of the period, and tied the score on a power-play goal by Carter Verhaege at 5:56 of the period, after the Rangers were penalized for having too many men on the ice.
But then Florida’s Nick Cousins was sent off for a cross-check against Chris Kreider, and Zibanejad scored to put the Rangers back in front, blasting home a one-timer from his usual left-circle spot off a pass from Panarin at 17:21. The goal was, Zibanejad’s team-leading 21st of the season.
But the Rangers didn’t seem to get any momentum from it. Florida peppered the Rangers’ net with shots and only some fine work in the nets by Shesterkin (33 saves) kept the Rangers’ lead intact. Finally, though, the new second line of Vesey, Vincent Trocheck and Barclay Goodrow scored a dirty goal to put the Rangers up 3-1 late in the second.
It started when Trocheck, who had a banner night in the faceoff circle, won a draw in the right circle and Vesey fired a shot that was blocked. Trocheck crashed the net and got a rebound shot off that Lyon kicked out, but Goodrow was first on the puck, and, as he drifted below the goal line, he fired it off Lyon’s back. The goalie tried to lay flat and cover the puck, but Vesey drove in and jammed the puck in for his eighth goal at 15:03.
The reunited Kid Line of Kakko, Filip Chytil and Alexis Lafrenière got a goal at 7:56 of the third, when Lafrenière jammed in the rebound of a shot by Kakko for his first goal since Dec. 7, breaking a 17-game drought. Zibanejad scored his second of the game 14 seconds later, taking a pass from Panarin (three assists) and whipping it past Lyon at 8:10.
Florida coach Paul Maurice pulled his goalie with little more than nine minutes to go, and it ended up working to produce a goal from Aleksander Barkov that made it 5-2 at 11:02. Chytil’s empty-net goal with 3:11 left made it 6-2, with Kakko getting his third assist of the night.
