In New York, two teams matched up on the Madison Square Garden ice on Monday night, both looking to start a redemption campaign.
The Rangers were coming off a 1-1-1 record over the last three games and the last was an ugly loss to the Chicago Blackhawks.
The St Louis Blues came to New York riding a three-game skid, and had lost five of six.
Trailing 4-3 headed to the third period, the Rangers were uncharacteristically resilient.
K’Andre Miller hit for the game-tying goal, 4-4 with just five minutes gone in the third.
Alexis Lafreniere scored the game-winner on a tip in just 3:28 later for a a 5-4 lead to the Rangers.
To cap the rally, Chris Kreider stole the puck at the Rangers blueline and raced in for a shorthanded goal and a 6-4 final score.
“We’ve got higher expectations for ourselves than anyone else outside this room or even in this organization has for us,” Kreider said. “The group in this room has very high expectations. We put more pressure on ourselves than anyone else ever could. So, for us it’s important to see pucks go in. It’s important to get the two points and obviously to take the things we did well, the things we had success doing into the next game. It’s about stacking it now.”
Igor Shesterkin made 25 saves in the New York win.
The Rangers improved to 12-10-5.
In the first period, the Rangers broke out on top, 1-0, on a goal from Braden Schneider from the right boards.
St Louis replied quickly on a strike from Pavel Buchnevich 70 seconds later to tie the game, 1-1.
Adam Fox put the Rangers ahead, again, with a writs shot on the power play.
“The streak we’ve been on the last two weeks hasn’t been good, so definitely to get a win tonight, it’s positive moving forward,” Rangers coach Gerard Gallant said. “We better be ready to play on the road.”
St Louis dropped to 11-14-0.
“I thought the first two periods were really good,” Blues coach Craig Berube said.
The Blues scored 12 seconds into the middle frame to knot it, 2-2, on a goal from Vladimir Tarasenko on a shot that deflected off Fox’s stick.
Vincent Trocheck restored the Rangers lead, 3-2 on goal from down low.
“We’re not a confident hockey team,” Berube said. “We’ve got to keep working at getting out of that. You’ve just got to go play. You can’t play tentative and you can’t play tight. You’ve got to loosen up and play. We did that for two periods, but the third, it didn’t happen.”
The the Rangers seemed to be snake-bit again when the Blues reeled off two goals from Jordan Kyrou and Ryan O’Reilly to take a 4-3 lead into the third period.
“When we get our forecheck going and we play in their end that’s when we create
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turnovers and we get our chances,” Lafreniere said. “Our third period was really good. We said it after two, ‘We’re only down by one.’ We can score when we work hard.”
Jordan Binnington made 18 saves in the Blues loss.
“It’s our mistakes that are causing their goals,” Kyrou said. “We have to be better with that. We have to clean that up.”
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