Rangers vs. Red Wings: Wings Spoil Jean Ratelle Night with Overtime Win
The New York Rangers failed to pick up a win for the seventh consecutive game with tonight’s 3-2 overtime loss to the Detroit Red Wings. Following an eventful day with the Rick Nash trade and Jean Ratelle’s jersey retirement, there was a lot of excitement to take in before the puck even dropped. That’s not to say the Rangers didn’t play well either, because they did, but Trevor Daley’s overtime winner sent them home with just a single point.
The Rangers actually had a relatively solid start to this game too and generated multiple scoring chances in the opening couple of minutes. Unfortunately, the Madison Square Garden version of Jimmy Howard appeared once again and kept the Rangers off the board with several game breaking saves. Those missed opportunities would come back to haunt the Rangers as Andreas Athanasiou put the Wings out in front at the 19:53 mark of the first period.
Athanasiou was able to use Rob O’Gara as a partial screen and fooled Lundqvist through the five hole. Later on in the second period, the Wings doubled up their lead coming off of a miscue by John Gilmour in the offensive zone. While attempting to walk the blue line, Gilmour’s skate got caught in rut and caused him to fall while being the last man back. That allowed Darren Helm to break in all alone on Henrik Lundqvist and he quickly snapped a puck past him give Detroit a 2-0 lead.
Nearly three minutes later, the Rangers came storming right back into the game with a blast from J.T. Miller off to the left side of the net. The newly acquired Ryan Spooner picked up his first assist in a Rangers sweater on the goal after a beautiful cross-ice feed to setup Miller. The Rangers continued to push the pace during the opening minutes of the third period, and were eventually rewarded at the 11:16 mark.
A creative passing play between Ryan Spooner, Jesper Fast, and Kevin Hayes led to a loose puck in the crease, which Jesper Fast promptly buried to tie up the game. That would be the final goal during regulation time which left the overtime period to decide the winner.
Just as this game appeared destined for the shootout, Frans Nielsen setup Trevor Daley with a ridiculous deflection in front of Henrik Lundqvist to stun the Rangers. Daley was able to get just enough of a step on Pavel Buchnevich and somehow got a piece of the puck to slip it by Henrik Lunqvist.
Tonight’s game was the final one on the schedule before tomorrow’s impending 3:00 PM trade deadline. It is unknown if the Rangers have any other moves up their sleeves, but it should be a pretty hectic day with rumors running at an all-time high. Even with the recent moves, there is still a ton of uncertainty surrounding this roster so tomorrow should be an interesting time.
Aside from that, the Rangers won’t be in action until Wednsday night against the Vancouver Canucks as they being their Western Canada road trip.
