NEW YORK — Anyone who wasn’t ready to believe in the New Jersey Devils, who thought their recent 13-game winning streak and their position at the top of the Metropolitan Division standings was some kind of mirage, take notice: Lindy Ruff’s team is for real.
Just ask Rangers coach Gerard Gallant.
“They're a fast, quick team, a real good hockey team,’’ Gallant said Monday, before his Rangers hosted the Devils at Madison Square Garden. “They're not lucky. They win the games. They deserve to be where they're at.’’
Gallant and his team got their first up-close look at the Devils this season and they learned what everyone else has learned already, taking an early two-goal lead and then watching as the Devils blew past them on the way to a 5-3 victory that lifted New Jersey’s record to 19-4 and dropped the Rangers to 10-9-4.
It was the Devils' 10th straight road win, which they last accomplished in 2001.
Trailing 4-2 entering the third period, the Rangers took advantage of some power plays in the final period, and Vincent Trocheck scored on one with 6:42 remaining to pull the home team within 4-3. But Yegor Sharangovich’s second goal of the game, into an empty net with 15.8 seconds left, sealed it.
Gallant actually went on to praise the Devils by saying when he envisions his team playing its best game it would look like the Devils do.
“They play real fast. They forecheck really aggressive,’’ he said. “If was a team that played the way I want to play, it's New Jersey, the way they're playing.’’
Gallant’s team took an early 2-0 lead on goals by Artemi Panarin and Mika Zibanejad. Panarin’s goal, his sixth of the season, broke a 12-game goal drought that had equaled the longest of his career.
Panarin had made an effort to play more assertively the last three games before Monday, trying to drive to the net more and actively looking to shoot when he’s in range. And in Saturday’s 4-3 loss to the Edmonton Oilers, he thought he’d scored twice, but video review denied him both times.
Wednesday, playing with new linemates in Kid Liners Filip Chytil and Kaapo Kakko, Panarin opened the scoring when he took a two-on-one pass from Chytil and fired a shot that beat Devils goalie Vitek Vanecek 1:20 into the game. Zibanejad’s goal, his 11th of the season as he crashed the crease and jammed in a rebound after Vanecek fumbled Jacob Trouba’s shot, made it 2-0 at 3:01.
But the Devils fought back. Tomas Tatar, a lefthanded shot skating up the right wing on a 3-on-2 break after a Rangers turnover in the neutral zone, lifted a backhand shot over Igor Shesterkin’s catching glove to get the Devils on the board at 7:33. And then, before the period was over, the Devils tied it on a goal by Sharangovich after Trouba failed to get the puck out at the left point and New Jersey kept it in the zone and Sharangovich got to the loose puck in the slot and whipped a turnaround wrist shot past Shesterkin at 13:25.
If the Rangers hoped the first intermission would break the momentum the Devils had suddenly created, they were wrong. After Chytil was foiled on a shot from the slot by Vanecek, Dawson Mercer collected a loose puck in the corner and flipped it out to center ice, springing Jack Hughes on a partial breakaway, with Rangers defenseman Ryan Lindgren racing to try and cut him off. Lindgren never made it, and Hughes tucked a shot inside the goalpost 5:44 into the second period for his 11th goal of the season, giving the Devils their first lead.
Michael McLeod made it 4-2 at 9:40 when he drove the net as Miles Wood fired a shot off the crossbar and Zac Jones’ attempted clear bounced off McLeod and into the net for his third goal of the season.
