In this mad sprint of a 2020-21 season, there isn’t much time to waste, letting things play themselves out while the losses are piling up.
But there wasn’t much Rangers coach David Quinn could do to address the biggest problem the Rangers had as they entered the finale of their four-game road trip Thursday in Buffalo against the Sabres — the underperformance of most of the team’s top six forwards. The coach could keep trying to shuffle people around, but mostly he just had to have faith that Mika Zibanejad, Ryan Strome, Chris Kreider, et al., start to click. And soon.
Well, Strome scored his second goal in three games, Artemi Panarin had a goal and an assist, and Alexis Lafreniere, the No. 1 overall pick, scored his first NHL goal 2:47 into overtime to give the Rangers a 3-2 victory over the Sabres, closing their four-game road trip with the happiest of endings.
The win ended the losing streak at four games for the Rangers (2-4-1), who return home Saturday to open a three-game homestand with the first of two games against Pittsburgh.
Lafreniere, on for a shift in the 3-on-3 overtime along with fellow rookie K’Andre Miller, and the newest Ranger, Colin Blackwell, scored after Blackwell stole the puck in the neutral zone and sent a pass from right to left, where Lafreniere collected it and roofed it over sprawling Buffalo goaltender Linus Ullmark.
The Rangers, who had blown leads in each of their last three losses, blew two leads in this one. Leading 2-1 entering the third period, they allowed Buffalo’s Sam Reinhart to tie it, 2-2, with a power play goal at 4:47 of the period.
Igor Shesterkin made 23 saves to earn his first victory of the season. He is 1-2-1.
Strome opened the scoring when he drove the net and banged in a feed from Panarin for his second goal of the season at 9:44 of the first period and the Rangers seemed to be energized after a lackluster performance in Tuesday’s loss. The Rangers outshot Buffalo 15-5 in the opening period, but the Sabres tied the score in final minute of the period when Jack Eichel got behind Miller and tipped in a pass from Sam Reinhart for his second goal of the season at 19:38.
The Rangers didn’t hang their heads, though, and kept up their dominating play in the second, until Panarin scored the go-ahead goal at 16:10, with the teams skating four-on-four. Strome drove the net against two Buffalo defenders and the puck squirted out to the left wing where Panarin snapped it home from a bad angle against Ullmark (36 saves) for his third goal of the season.
Tony DeAngelo entered Thursday with zero points, and a team-worst plus/minus of minus-5. The 25-year-old defenseman has split time the last four games partnering with Jack Johnson and Brendan Smith on the third pair, and sat out two games early in the season as punishment for a bad penalty he took in the season opener against the Islanders.
But all of that was behind him on the road trip, and Quinn praised DeAngelo for playing perhaps his best game of the young season in Tuesday’s loss.
"We fully expect him to be the player he was last year, even at a higher level,’’ Quinn said of DeAngelo. "(It’s) not the start he certainly envisioned but there's a lot of guys in that boat, so I don't want to harp on one guy. There's more than a handful of guys that need to be better, and I know they will be, just because of their track record.’’
Quinn changed up his first power play unit, putting DeAngelo back on it, alongside Adam Fox, and adding the red-hot Pavel Buchnevich to the group, along with Zibanejad and Panarin.
