There are ugly wins, and then there are wins like the New York Rangers’ 6-3 decision over the Sharks in San Jose on Thursday night.
After taking a 2-1 lead, the Rangers surrendered two goals to trail 3-2 in the third period.
The Sharks outplayed the Rangers who seemed mystified as to where to be on the ice, especially on the Sharks third goal.
The Rangers tightened up and rallied with four unanswered goals in the latter stages of the final frame to get the win.
Mika Zibanejad tied the game and then added the game-winner.
“It’s kind of our responsibility,” Zibanejad said. “We get that ice time. We get the opportunities to be the guys who are supposed to produce offensively.”
Artemi Panarin completed a hat trick in the third period as well.
“You get a lead with 15 minutes left, you’ve got to defend a little harder and not turn the puck over like we did,” San Jose captain Logan Couture said. “We wanted to defend our slot harder. I don’t think we did.”
Jesper Fast also scored for the Rangers.
“At the beginning of the year, we really didn’t have answer for falling behind during the game and we couldn’t find a way to get our momentum back,” Zibanejad said. “But now we’re finding ways to crawl back into games. We aren’t playing great, trusting our system and working on the little things.”
Alexandar Georgiev made 15 saves in the win.
“I’ll enjoy the trick tomorrow,” Panarin said. “We played some of the periods well and then some not so well. A road win is especially good because it’s so hard to play on the road.”
Brenden Dillonand Couture scored for the Sharks.
“We passed up too many shots, which we’ve done lately. You have to take more than 18 shots to win hockey games in this league,” Couture said.
Tomas Hertl added a shorthanded goal for San Jose.
“When we went down 3-2, we really started to show some things we hadn’t shown a lot this year,” Rangers coach David Quinn said. “We didn’t feel sorry for ourselves and we were able to climb up from the hole. Once we tied it up, we became relentless out on the ice. You could feel the momentum change on our bench when we tied it at 3.”
[WATCH: All Rangers vs. Sharks highlights]
Martin Jones made saves in the loss.
“They just had more jump than us in the third,” Jones said. “We’ve got to find a way in a tie hockey game to come out with a little bit more energy.
“I don’t know how many shots or scoring chances we had in the third, but we’ve got to find a way to put more pressure on in a close hockey game like that.”
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