Despite the New York Rangers playing their third game in four days, they soundly defeated the Penguins 5-2 in Pittsburgh on Sunday afternoon. The Rangers are heating up in the race for the Metropolitan Division and have now won 14 of their last 17 games and are just two points behind the Penguins for second place with a game in hand.
The Rangers scored twice in the 1st period. Goals were from Rick Nash just 26 seconds into the first period and Derick Brassard with with 13:52 left. Nash now has 28 goals for this season, which ties him for the NHL lead.
Sidney Crosby scored a power play goal with assists from David Perron and Kris Letang late in the first to make it a 2-1 game.
“We definitely got some bad bounces, but we didn’t really give ourselves a chance to get back in it.” said Crosby.
Pittsburgh fell farther behind when the Rangers scored twice in the second period as well. The goals were from Nash with 17:21 left with Brassard on the assist and Derek Stepan with 14:26 left, making it his seventh goal of the season.
Perron scored with 15:44 left in the third period, which temporarily cut the lead to 4-2 with assists from Bortuzzo and Letang, until Stepan scored again with 13:45 left in the third. Perron has scored six points in his last three games.
“I thought we missed some, first thing on that first one I don’t know for whatever reason, I didn’t feel like I could execute well and the other guys I thought were executing well and I needed to be better on the next two power plays and I thought I was a little bit better.” said Perron on the power plays.
“Every game is different, every situation is different, I thought tonight in the game the big thing for me was they got two bounces early, they got the bounce at the blue line, and the bounce off the glass, but it’s how you respond to those things,” said Pittsburgh coach Mike Johnston. “Until we got the power play goal, we had a little bit of a response with only four minutes left in the third period, up until that point we should’ve really dug in and got a response.”
Photo credit: NHL
