NEW YORK — Home sweet home hasn’t been so sweet for the Rangers this season.
The Blueshirts were back home at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday night to face the Metropolitan Division-leading Carolina Hurricanes, winners of 11 straight games. And playing the league’s hottest team at home, where they haven’t been great this season, didn’t bode well for the Rangers, who have lost more games at home than they’ve won this season.
But maybe Gerard Gallant’s team needed a challenge of this magnitude. Trailing three separate times against the ‘Canes, the Blueshirts kept plugging away and coming back until K’Andre Miller, who’d been having a rough night, tipped home a shot by Mika Zibanejad at 10:27 of the third period to provide the winner in a 5-3 victory for the Blueshirts over the team with the second-best record in the NHL.
Miller and his defense partner Jacob Trouba, had been on ice for all three Carolina goals to that point, but like the rest of the team, they kept shrugging it off and kept working. With the score tied, 3-3, Miller carried the puck deep into the Carolina zone and was on his way out from deep in the zone back to his defense position when Zibanejad blasted a shot that Miller deflected in past goalie Pyotr Kochetkov for his third goal of the season.
Filip Chytil, who had been demoted to the fourth line in the third period, added a power-play goal into an empty net with 1:02 left.
The Rangers had trailed 3-2 entering the third period, but tied it 36 seconds into the period on an unlikely goal by Artemi Panarin, who flipped a wrist shot from the blue line through a crowd and saw it slip under Kochetkov’s left pad.
The victory was the Rangers’ second of 2023, following up on their New Year’s Day win over Florida. And it lifted their home record to 9-7-4 on the season.
Carolina (25-7-6), showing off their speed and quickness early, took the lead on a dirty goal by defenseman Brent Burns, who managed to get his stick on a loose puck in front of goalie Igor Shesterkin and whack it off Miller’s skate and in at 7:24 of the first period.
The Rangers tied it with the first of three power-play goals at 16:26 of the period, when Trouba’s right point shot deflected off Carolina defenseman Jalen Chatfield and got behind Kochetkov. But the lead lasted 16 seconds, until Carolina leading-scorer Martin Necas blasted a one-timer past Shesterkin for a 2-1 Hurricanes lead at 16:42.
The Rangers’ power play connected again to tie the score at 16:45 of the second period when Zibanejad sent a pass up the middle looking for ex-Carolina player Vincent Trocheck. Trocheck never caught up to the puck, but it fooled Kochetkov and slipped between his pads to make it 2-2.
But again, the Hurricanes untied the score in less than a minute, when Chatfield’s shot deflected off the stick of Chytil and by Shesterkin to make it 3-2, Carolina.
Tuesday’s game marked the beginning of a January schedule that has the Rangers playing seven of their 11 games at home, and sees them playing all four current division leaders among those seven games. In all, five of their home games this month are against teams with winning records.
Following Tuesday’s game, the Rangers go to Montreal for a game against the Canadiens on Thursday, and then to Newark on Saturday for a matinee against the Devils. Then they’re home for three straight against old friend Ryan Reaves and the Minnesota Wild (21-13-2), the Central Division-leading Dallas Stars (23-9-6), and a return matchup with the Canadiens.
After a trip to Columbus Jan. 16, they close the month with home games against Atlantic Division-leading Boston, who currently hold the NHL’s best record, at 29-4-4, followed by the struggling Florida Panthers (16-18-4), and Pacific Division-leading Vegas (26-12-2) in their final game before the All-Star break. They also have a game in Toronto (23-8-6) on Jan. 25.
