Two minutes of sheer chaos ended the night in Madison Square Garden. With their net empty, the Tampa Bay Lightning pressed the Rangers’ cage for the game-tying goal, to no avail.
Igor Shesterkin made 29 saves and held a 3-2 lead for the Rangers until the final horn for the win.
“We heard all year that [we weren’t] really going to have playoff success,” Rangers; defenseman Adam Fox said “We said it all year, the belief in the room is high and the outside opinions don’t really affect anyone. Coming back from down 3-1, down 2-0, and this team obviously had a good playoff streak of not losing back-to-back games, but that’s not really in our minds when we’re coming to the games. We’re not thinking about what streaks teams have or how they have done earlier. It’s right now.”
The Game 2 victory gives the Rangers an improbable 2-0 series lead.
“At some point, you’re going to lose two in a row in the playoffs,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “The fact that we haven’t for how many years is remarkable, so we could take a second here and say, ‘[Heck] of a job, boys’, but for the most part, streaks do come to an end and unfortunately it came to an end tonight. Did it knock us out of the playoffs? It did not. Do we have a hill to climb? No question.”
Game 3 in in Tampa on Sunday.
“We want to battle hard, we want to compete hard, and we’ve been a tough out so far,” coach Gerard Gallant said. “The guys have to rally around that. I think we’re a good hockey team. We’ve played great hockey in the playoffs. We find a way to win games.”
Nikita Kucherov staked the Lightning to a 1-0 lead in the first period after Tampa had goaded Ryan Reaves into a penalty.
“It was just puck management,” Lightning defenseman Victor Hedman said. “It’s one of those things that we need to be better at.”
The power play strike did little quell the frenzy in the stands.
“I just think we haven’t executed the proper way that has got us here, especially the last couple of years in terms of puck management and execution, and stuff like that,” Lightning captain Steven Stamkos said. “We talked about the amount of skill they have on their team. If you give them chances, they are a very skilled team and they can make you pay.”
The goal came with less than three minutes gone in the game.
K’Andre Miller tied it for the Rangers after his first shot was stopped. The puck bounced into the high slot and Miller leaned into it for a second goal and a 1-1 tie.
“Obviously, [the Lightning] are a skilled team with a lot of experience in these playoffs so I think it was just about managing that and trying to keep out game simple and sticking to the game plan,” Miller said.
The Rangers continued to pressure the Tampa net and Kaapo Kakko tipped in a shot/pass from Fox for a 2-1 lead.
“I think we did a great job limiting them, especially in the first two periods,” Fox said. “We didn’t make too many mistakes. We were able to feel them. We did a good job playing from the middle out and feeling our transition, and when we needed those big saves at the end, we got them as usual, but I thought throughout the game we did a good job of limiting their chances.”
Filip Chytil also assisted on the goal to keep the Kid Line hot in the series.
“I just stayed in front of the net,” Kakko said. “We got some chances before that and then ‘Foxy’ got the puck and made a nice pass, so easy job for me to just put it in the net.”
With just 81 seconds of clean ice in the third period gone,, Mika Zibanejad hit off a goal from the left wing for a 3-1 lead to New York.
“It was a big goal, obviously,” Gallant said. “We knew they were going to push real hard. … We battled. We found a way. We are playing against a real good team over there and again, they pushed it and we made some key saves at the end there to keep it 3-2.”
The final two minutes of the game started with Nicholas Paul getting the Lightning within one at 3-2.
“Just the urgency to win those battles and then keep our feet moving really turned the tables at the end,” Paul said. “Obviously, not the result we wanted, but take that third period, remember it and just keep going from there.”
The chaos and surge of the Tampa skaters, including an extra attacker was hair raising, but Shesterkin held serve and the Rangers find themselves in unfamiliar territory.
“I still stand by my opinion,” Shesterkin said. “Everything is as I said before: Andrei is still the best goalie in the world. You can’t forget that the series is four wins, so you just have to keep playing”
Chris Kreider and Fox had two assists each for the Rangers.
“I can’t imagine [how many] times people have said nice things about Igor bailing us out at this point in the year,” Miller said. “[Shesterkin is] unreal. You see it every game, the number of highlight-reel saves. Obviously we have a lot of trust in him and try to let him do his thing. We try to limit the chances that he sees, block shots and doing those little things, but ‘Shesty’s’ Shesty, he’s going to stop the puck.”
Andrei Vasilevskiy made 25 saves in the Lightning loss.
“We got better as the game went on,” Hedman said. “We had a bunch of opportunities to tie the game up there at the end, so we’ll take that with us going into next game. We can’t hang our hats just because we are going to home ice, but it’s going to be great to be in front of our fans and try and get the next game.”
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