Roughly two-and-a-half hours before the scheduled faceoff for their St. Patrick’s Day game with the Philadelphia Flyers at Madison Square Garden Wednesday, the Rangers announced that their entire bench coaching staff – head coach David Quinn and assistants Jacques Martin, David Oliver and Greg Brown – would be unavailable for the game due to the NHL’s COVID-19 protocol.
Maybe the staff should take a night off more often.
With Hartford Wolf Pack coaches Kris Knoblauch and Gord Murphy, and Rangers associate GM Chris Drury behind the bench for the Rangers, Mika Zibanejad exploded for three goals and three assists, and Pavel Buchnevich, who came off the team’s COVID-19 list and went right into the lineup, had two goals and two assists, as the Rangers thoroughly embarrassed the Flyers, 9-0, in front of a national TV audience.
The nine goals were a season-high for the Rangers, who split the two-game series with the Flyers and reached the halfway point of the 56-game season with a record of 12-12-4. Goaltender Alexandar Georgiev, who had been pulled from each of his last two starts, made 26 saves to earn his second shutout of the season.
The announcement that the Rangers coaches were out came at around 5 p.m., the same time as Buchnevich and defenseman Adam Fox, who both had missed Monday’s 5-4 overtime loss to the Flyers after being placed on the NHL’s Covid list that day, were officially removed from the list.
Fox got the Rangers started when he drove down the right wing and sent a cross-ice pass to Brendan Lemieux for a tap-in goal that put the Rangers up, 1-0, at 7:05 of the first period. Ryan Strome set up Artemi Panarin for a one-timer goal to make it 2-0 at 14:47 of the period, and the Rangers were well on their way.
Buchnevich scored the first two goals of what would be a seven-goal second period for the Rangers, and then, after Jacob Trouba scored his first goal of the season, Zibanejad scored three straight to double his season goal total and make it 8-0. Filip Chytil made it 9-0 just before the period ended.
Brian Elliott, the Flyers’ starting goaltender, was pulled after the fifth goal, which came at 7:30 of the period, and replaced by Carter Hart. But the first shot that Hart faced was a shorthanded breakaway by Zibanejad, who collected the puck inside his own blue line after Philadelphia defenseman Ivan Provorov fell down at the point and lost the puck, skated in with zero pressure on his back. He had time to fake to the forehand, fake to the backhand, and then come back to the forehand and tuck it behind the sprawled-out goalie at 8:27.
Zibanejad’s six points in the period tied an NHL record held by former Rangers coach Bryan Trottier, who had six points for the Islanders in the second period of a 9-4 win over the Rangers on Dec. 23, 1978.
How long the Rangers coaching staff will be unavailable is unknown. Being unavailable to participate in a game does not necessarily mean an individual has tested positive for the coronavirus. It is possible there has been a false positive, or an inconclusive test, or perhaps the individual was deemed to have been a close contact of someone who did test positive.
So far this season, forward Kaapo Kakko, defenseman K’Andre Miller – and now Fox and Buchnevich – have missed one game after being placed on the list but were able to return for the next game, because they did not have the virus.
Kakko later did contract the virus, and missed six games over a 14-day period, from Feb. 20 through March 5.
The concern for Quinn, who is in his third season coaching the Rangers, is that if he does have the virus, he would be considered a high-risk individual, given that he had Hemophilia B, a rare genetic blood disorder sometimes called Christmas Disease. The disease surfaced after Quinn’s junior year of college at Boston University, when he was trying out for the 1988 U.S. Olympic Hockey Team, and ultimately scuttled his dreams of playing in the NHL.
