In Washington, DC< Mika Zibanejad abused Capitals defenseman Brenden Dillon on the right side of the Caps’ defensive zone, pestered the d-man with his stick and mugged him just enough to force a turnover.
Mika Zibanejad scored the game-winner for the New York Rangers
Zibanejad then grabbed the puck and roofed a quick wrister for a 2-1 lead to the Rangers with two and half minutes left in regulation on Saturday.
“I was basically just chasing [Dillon] and tried to stay on him,” said Zibanejad, who also had an assist. “Got a push. I don’t know if he caught a rut or something. He fell, and I was able to get the puck. Tried to get it on net and it went in, so it was nice.”
Keith Kinkaid made 28 saves to earn the win for New York.
“I guess you’d say we flipped the script,” Kinkaid said. “Mika gets hit late in the game (by Garnet Hathaway with 8:19 remaining) like that and comes back and scores the game-winner. I think our attention to detail was huge. I don’t know how many blocked shots we had (23), but guys were sacrificing their bodies. Anything it took.”
The Rangers are 2-1-0 under coach Kris Knoblauch.
“I was really worried about the confidence [after the Capitals tied it],” Knoblauch said. “It could have easily been, ‘Oh, here we go again.’ But the guys were positive, especially the leaders were talking and just wanted to make sure we finished this one out. I don’t think there was panic at all.”
John Carlson scored in the third period to give the Rangers nightmares of their Friday night loss.
“I thought as the game wore on, we started to generate more chances and more looks, we had lots of attempts,” Washington head coach Peter Laviolette said. “They did a good job of blocking shots, but we had zone time. We were doing a lot of things we wanted, just unable to get it done.”
Pavel Buchnevich picked up a power play goal in the first period to give the Rangers a 1-0 lead just like had on Friday night.
Brett Howden scored his first of the season into an empty net to ice the win.
Ilya Samsonov made 22 saves in the loss.
“It felt like we had a lot of great chances and we’ve got to find a way to bear down,” Carlson said. “Especially these low-scoring games, I think we’ve been great 5-on-5 as a team, but your special teams really need to step up, and even with the chances we did get, I had probably two or three really good looks that I missed.”
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