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Recap: Rangers Overcome Hurricanes, 5-3

After snapping Toronto’s prodigious win streak earlier this season, the Rangers cap the Canes’ streak at 11.

The Rangers wrapped up their string of games against southern teams when they hosted the red hot Carolina Hurricanes Tuesday night. Though they trailed most of the game, the Blueshirts ultimately played spoiler yet again, snapping the Hurricanes 11 game winning streak by a score of 5-3.

The Rangers were hemmed in their own zone for much of the first period, and would find themselves trailing after one. Brent Burns opened the scoring when he followed up an awkward rebound that everyone seemed to lose. Not a pretty goal, but it counts just the same.

The Rangers eventually knotted the game at one on a powerplay goal by Jacob Trouba that got double deflected, first by our old friend Derek Stepan, then by Jalen Chatfield. Vitali Kravtsov, who I think has been looking much better of late, notched the primary assist on what was only the second powerplay goal scored by the Rangers second unit all season. It was also the first powerplay goal the Hurricanes surrendered in their last 14 penalty kills. Not bad.

The tie lasted for all of 26 seconds before the Canes retook the lead. Martin Necas absolutely ripped a wrister past Igor Shesterkin off a pass from down low by Andrei Svechnikov. The Rangers had numbers back, but no one seemed to actually be covering anyone or any passing lanes.

he second period was evenly matched throughout, and each team scored a late goal to keep Carolina in the lead by one. For the second game in a row, Mika Zibanejad scored a powerplay goal that was mildly fluky. From the center point, Zib tossed something of a slipstream pass toward Vincent Trocheck in front of the net. Trocheck never touched the puck and neither did Pyotor Kochetkov.

This time, the Rangers nearly kept the game tied for 30 seconds before a Chatfield shot deflected off Filip Chytil’s stick and into the net to give the Canes a 3-2 lead heading into the third.

In the first minute, Artemi Panarin tied the game yet again. He carried the puck from low to high and tossed the puck on net under the pad of Kochetkov. The goal was Panarin’s fifth in his last eight games. Not only did the tie stick for a little while, but the Rangers even went on to take their first lead of the game. Kaapo Kakko carried the puck up the sideboards and set up Zibanejad for a point shot that K’Andre Miller tipped to give the Rangers a 4-3 lead. Chytil later put the game on ice with an empty net powerplay goal to put away a solid 5-3 victory.

The Rangers turned in another solid performance against a good team. Both teams had some weird bounces and soft calls from the refs, but there weren’t any glaring holes in the Rangers performance. Zibanejad and Panarin continued to produce, and Miller had a huge game on both sides of the puck.

The Rangers will take on the Canadiens on Thursday night.

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