BUFFALO, N.Y. _ We don't know exactly how long the Rangers' admitted rebuilding project is scheduled to last. Across the ice from them Friday night, though, the Blueshirts had a pretty good look at a team that hit bottom a year ago, got the No. 1 pick in the draft, and now is on the ascent.
The Buffalo Sabres had the worst record in the league last season, but after drafting Rasmus Dahlin, the Swedish defenseman, with the first pick overall, and signing a few impact free agents, the Sabres are 28-22-7, and challenging for a playoff spot this season. The Rangers, though, despite losing defenseman Brady Skjei to a lower-body injury, played spoiler against the Sabres, beating them, 6-2, in the second game of a four-game trip that continues Sunday afternoon in Pittsburgh against the Penguins, before concluding Tuesday in Raleigh against the Carolina Hurricanes.
The Rangers, who have been overly reliant on getting most of their offense from the top line of Chris Kreider, Mika Zibanejad and Mats Zuccarello, this time got nothing from their No. 1 trio and got all of their scoring from their second, third and fourth lines. Boo Nieves, Jesper Fast, Jimmy Vesey, Pavel Buchnevich and Vladislav Namestnikov _ who scored two goals, after not scoring in his previous 23 games _ scored the Rangers goals.
Alexandar Georgiev, who made 55 saves on his 23rd birthday on Sunday in a 4-1 win over Toronto, was strong again in net, making 33 saves to improve his record on the season to 9-9-0.
Playing with seven defensemen for the third game in a row, the Rangers (25-24-8) found themselves discombobulated early when Adam McQuaid was sent off for an interference penalty just 55 seconds into the game. But they killed that penalty. And after one turn through the lineup with the seven defensemen, coach David Quinn threw defenseman Brendan Smith up on left wing of the fourth line, with Nieves and Connor Brickley, who'd been called up Thursday from AHL Hartford.
And on their first shift together, Nieves scored, off an assist from Smith, to give the Rangers a 1-0 lead at 4:09 of the first period. After that, Quinn decided to keep Smith at forward, and play Tony DeAngelo, a right-handed shot, at left defense on the third pairing with Kevin Shattenkirk. That lasted until midway through the second period, when Skjei left the game with a lower-body injury.
Before that happened, the Rangers had taken a 2-0 lead, at 14:03 of the first period, when Namestnikov, whose last goal was Dec. 18, fired a shot from the left point through traffic, that was deflected in by Fast. For Namestnikov, the assist gave him his first point in 11 games, his last assist having come exactly a month earlier, on Jan. 15, in a 6-2 win over the Hurricanes.
The Sabres got on the board right after the first intermission, when Jeff Skinner crashed the slot and slammed in a pass from behind the net from Jason Pominville for his 35th goal, at 53 seconds of the second period. But the Rangers bounced back quickly, when Vesey crashed the net to jam in a pass from behind the net from Buchnevich at 1:51 to put the Rangers up 3-1.
But Nieves got penalized for delay of game, when he shot the puck over the glass, at 15:11 of the period, and Skinner scored his second of the game on the ensuing power play, cutting the Rangers' lead to 3-2 at 16:56.
