In New York, Mika Zibanejad picked up a hat, his third of the season, for the Rangers, in a 6-3 win over the Buffalo Sabres on Sunday.
Mika Zibanejad had his third hat trick of the year in the win for the New York Rangers
The win, coupled with a Boston Bruins loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins, pushed the Rangers to within four points of the last playoff spot in the East.
“I probably have had better games than tonight where I didn’t have three goals or points,” Zibanejad said. “The puck just seemed to go in today, and when you have that feeling you just keep shooting. I am playing with two great players on my line (Pavel Buchnevich and Alexis Lafreniere) and they’re finding me. I just have to shoot and pray to God that it goes in.”
Boston has two games in hand.
“That’s the only thing we can do, try to win games and see how far that takes us, really,” Zibanejad said. “That’s our mindset right now, just focus on the next game, try to get the two points and move on from there.”
Igor Shesterkin made 31 saves to get the win.
“I thought you could feel it before the game that we understood that we had another opportunity to maybe climb back into this thing,” New York head coach David Quinn said. “There’s hope.”
New York took a 3-1 lead after 20 minutes.
Zibanejad posted his first goal of the game early in the opening frame.
Jeff Skinner tied it at 1-1 before Kaapo Kakko scored the first of his two goals on the night for a2-1.
“We did make some adjustments as the game went along, gave up a lot less, but obviously we couldn’t make up the goal differential and that was the problem,” Sabres head coach Don Granato said. “We’re obviously an evolving group here. I don’t want to say learning, it’s more evolving and adjusting. We made some adjustments in-game that slowed that tide and tipped things at least from a chance standpoint in our favor. But, again, too late and now we get a chance to play them right away again and it will be nice to see how we can respond.”
Zibanejad added a power play marker before the period ended fo the 3-1 lead.
New York pushed the lead to 4-1 when Zibanejad completed his hat trick early in the middle frame.
“We’ve just got to keep taking each game as it is and keep playing meaningful hockey until someone tells us these games aren’t meaningful,” Quinn said.
Buffalo’s Victor Olofsson scored in the 15th minute of the second period to get the score to 4-2.
Just when the Rangers needed a little breathing room, Kakko delivered on his second goal of the game for a 5-2 lead.
“That’s his v(Fox) ision,” Kakko said. “He’s a great player and when he’s got the puck on the blue line just be ready, he can do something like that.”
The Sabres tightened it up again when Sam Reinhart scored midway through the third period.
Kevin Rooney added an empty-net swipe from the defensive zone on a shorthanded strike to ice the game.
Dustin Tokarski made 23 saves in the loss.
“I gave a lot of thought to it, consulted with our coaches, our goalie coach,” Granato said. “I was concerned at that point with Dustin’s confidence, probably the fourth goal. … Dustin responded fine from that standpoint.”
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