NEW YORK — Back home at Madison Square Garden for the first time in two weeks, and fully healthy for the first time in a month, the Rangers understood they were in for a major challenge against the Toronto Maple Leafs Wednesday.
At the start, it looked like they might not have been up to the challenge, but enforcer Ryan Reaves scored his first two goals as a Ranger, Toronto native Ryan Strome scored the winner, and All-Star Chris Kreider added his 25th goal of the season for insurance, as the Blueshirts rallied from two goals down after the first period to fashion a come-from-behind, 6-3 victory over the Maple Leafs, giving them their third straight win.
Adam Fox added an empty-netter to seal it for the Rangers, who scored five unanswered goals after trailing 3-1 at the end of the first period.
Igor Shesterkin, playing his third straight game since coming out of COVID-19 protocol, got off to a slow start but was huge in the final two periods for the Rangers, finishing with 35 saves to improve to 18-4-2. With the win, the Rangers (26-10-4, 56 points) moved back into first place in the Metropolitan Division, two points ahead of the Carolina Hurricanes, who they will face for the first time on Friday in Raleigh, N.C.
Strome was driving to the back post in a 3-3 game when Ryan Lindgren’s pass deflected off the stick of Toronto forward William Nylander’s stick and went right to Strome, who had a wide open half of the net to put the puck into for his ninth goal, at 10:50 of the third period.
Kreider then scored at 15:33 off a rebound of a shot by Jacob Trouba to make it 5-3. Toronto looked like it had pulled within 5-4 on an apparent goal by Auston Matthews, but the goal was overturned on video review, which determined Matthews had kicked the puck into the net.
The Maple Leafs got the drop on the Rangers when Ilya Mikheyev got the visitors on the board with his sixth goal in eight games this season, at 2:44 of the first period. They made it 2-0 at 3:30 of the period, when Mitch Marner scored his first power-play goal in 100 games, dating to Feb. 1, 2020.
But a dominating shift by the Rangers’ fourth line got them back into the game when Greg McKegg and Kevin Rooney double-teamed a Toronto player on the end boards and won the puck, which McKegg passed to Fox. Fox gave it back to McKegg and he whipped a pass from the corner to the slot to a wide open Reaves, who calmly controlled the puck and whipped a shot past Jack Campbell at 12:52. It wasn’t only Reaves’ first goal as a Ranger, but the 50th of his NHL career.
But Toronto scored again to take a 3-1 lead before the period was over, when Michael Bunting poked in a rebound at 17:50.
Rangers coach Gerard Gallant switched up his top three forward lines for a couple of shifts late in the period, putting his most dynamic forward, Artemi Panarin, on the top line, with Mika Zibanejad and Kreider. Alexis Lafreniere moved up to Panarin’s spot on the second line, with Strome and Filip Chytil, while Kaapo Kakko dropped down to Lafreniere’s spot as the third line left wing, with Barclay Goodrow and Julien Gauthier.
Gallant went back to the regular lines at the start of the second period, but it was the one line he hadn’t tinkered with that kept dominating. Reaves scored his second goal at 2:58 of the second period, getting to a rebound off the back boards and lifting a sharp-angle shot off Campbell’s shoulder and in to make it 3-2 and once again get the Rangers back in the game. Then, at 17:49 of the period, Fox drove down the middle to bang in a pass from behind the goal line from Strome to tie it 3-3.
