In Raleigh Wednesday night, the New York Rangers’ Chris Kreider and Jesper Fast scored two goals each as the Rangers downed the Carolina Hurricanes, 6-1.
“We came ready to play. I don’t think we gave them three or four chances 5-on-5 in the whole game. We needed guys to step up on defense. This was probably Smith’s best game of the year tonight both offensively and defensively,” Rangers head coach Alain Vigneault said after the game.
Mika Zibanejad and Paul Carey added goals in the Rangers win; New York is 8-2-0 in their 10 games and 1109-2 overall.
Ryan McDonagh was sidelined for the game with an injury.
“Obviously, when you lose your best defensive player, it’s tough to fill that hole, but I thought our guys did a really good job,” said Brendan Smith, who was plus-4. “We made the simple plays and it helped us early.”
Sebastian Aho scored to the lone goal for the Canes.
“They get the first one there on their power play, (then) we got outworked pretty much the remainder of the third period,” the Canes’ Justin Faulk said.
Zibanejad’s goal was a mishandle by Scott Darling in the Canes net; Zibanajad lofted the puck on net from the neutral zone and Darling missed it.
“That’s a tough one to give up obviously,” Hurricanes head coach Bill Peters said. “That’s not how you envision the start. I thought our start was poor.”
Henrik Lundqvist made 32 saves in the win.
[WATCH: All Rangers vs. Hurricanes highlights]
Darling made 21 saves in the loss and would certainly prefer having Zibanejad’s whiff back.
“We were slow to pucks, we were slow defensively. We didn’t close on anybody and when we did close, we weren’t physical enough to put an end to the cycle or their offensive zone motion,” Peters said. “We were shorthanded for 49 seconds to start the third and they scored on it. Then that was the air out of the balloon for us. We didn’t compete from that point on very hard.”
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