Before recapping all the crazy stuff that’s been going on in the Rangers’ pursuit of Chicago star Patrick Kane over the last week, and the nutty stuff that happened on Sunday, it should be noted that the Rangers beat the Los Angeles Kings, 5-2, Sunday at Madison Square Garden to snap their four-game losing streak.
Igor Shesterkin made 25 saves in a bounce back effort after getting pulled in Saturday's loss in Washington.
But for the third straight game, the final score was a whole lot less significant than all the other stuff that was happening around the team.
To start with, K’Andre Miller was ejected from the game late in the first period for spitting at a Kings player. He now faces an automatic hearing and possible suspension.
And the Rangers got a scare when Mika Zibanejad, their No. 1 center and perhaps their best all-around player, left late in the second period after blocking a shot while killing a penalty. Zibanejad got a huge cheer from the fans when he stepped onto the ice as the Rangers came out to start the third period, and the crowd exploded with noise when he scored a power-play goal to make it 5-2.
Already without defenseman Ryan Lindgren because of an injury suffered Saturday in Washington, the Rangers played with two players – defenseman Braden Schneider and forward Ryan Carpenter – dressed but not playing as part of the complicated gymnastics of trying to create enough salary cap room to trade for Kane.
Carpenter had been called up from AHL Hartford before the game Sunday to replace Jake Leschyshyn, who was sent down to try and open space under the $82.5 million salary cap to fit one-quarter of Kane’s $10.5 million cap hit. The call-up had been necessitated by the injury to Lindgren because NHL rules do not allow teams to play with fewer than 18 skaters who dress for a game.
However, in order to make the trade for Kane on Wednesday, rather than Thursday, the Rangers will need to move Schneider onto the Hartford roster Monday, bring him back Wednesday for their game in Philadelphia, and return Carpenter to Hartford Wednesday. To ensure neither Carpenter nor Schneider didn’t get hurt in Sunday’s game, they did not play them.
So they started the game playing 11 forwards and five defensemen before Miller was given a match penalty with 3:23 remaining in the first period. The Rangers were leading 1-0 at the time on a goal by Alexis Lafrenière, but were forced to kill a five-minute major penalty with only four defensemen available.
They killed it, and 25 seconds after it expired, Vincent Trocheck scored the first of his two goals, when his attempted pass to Chris Kreider on a rush into the Kings’ zone deflected off a Kings player and got by goalie Jonathan Quick to make it 2-0 at 2:02.
One minute, 35 seconds later, Trocheck broke into the Kings’ zone with two defenders in front of him and fired a wrist shot that beat Quick to make it 3-0. Quick got pulled after that, replaced by Pheonix Copley.
The Kings got on the board with a power-play goal by Viktor Arvidsson – which survived a video review to see if he had hit the puck with a high stick – and got within 3-2 on a goal by Matt Roy at 1:27 of the third. But Artemi Panarin scored on his own rebound at 2:11 and Zibanejad scored his 31st of the season later in the period to close the scoring.
