Rangers End Road Trip With 3-2 Shootout Win Over Ducks

ANAHEIM - Rangers fans who stayed up late for these last couple games in California certainly have been treated to some nail-biting hockey. Not the kind of excitement David Quinn's team was hoping to deliver - but certainly the results they wanted to bring home.
The Rangers' Wild West road trip wrapped up on Thursday night with another frantic finish and another Blueshirts victory. For the third straight game, the Rangers surrendered a goal in the final minute of regulation - but for the second time in three nights they regrouped, refocused and reeled in two points.
Rickard Rakell scored this one for Anaheim, a game-tying goal with 25.3 seconds to play, but Alexandar Georgiev, in his first career shootout, stymied both Ducks to face him, while the Killer Z's - Mats Zuccarello and Mika Zibanejad - each beat John Gibson to give the Rangers a thrilling, if nerve-racking, 3-2 win over the Anaheim Ducks and back-to-back victories for the first time in 2018-19.

"It's tough when you get goals against like that, but we're finding ways to win hockey games," Zuccarello said. "It's a tough road trip and we won two tough games here, San Jose and Anaheim. We should be happy about that.
"Find a way to win hockey games, that's the most important thing."
Brett Howden set up the Rangers' first goal, by Kevin Hayes, and scored their second, both in the middle period, to give the rookie center his first career multi-point game and four points on the four-game road trip. And Georgiev, taking his third start this season and the 12th of his NHL career, made 28 saves in regulation and overtime to win his second straight start.

Rakell and Jakob Silfverberg scored the goals for the Ducks, whose lost their seventh straight game (0-5-2) following a 5-1-1 start.
The victory sent the Rangers home with a 2-2 record on their four-game road trip that started with a pair of losses in Chicago and Los Angeles, followed by grind-it-out wins in San Jose and Anaheim.
"This is not easy. This long of a trip, you could sense it in practice yesterday, they didn't have a lot of life," David Quinn said. "But over 60 minutes, we just found a way. We gutted it out. "In an 82-game season you have to find ways to manage to get points in games where you're not playing great and don't feel great, and we did that tonight."
Hayes started the scoring in this one on a power play 1:42 into the second period, banging home his third of the season after a puck retrieval by Filip Chytil behind Gibson's net. Silfverberg struck back on an Anaheim man-advantage at 12:31, bunting a rebound out of midair after Georgiev had stretched across to get his blocker on a one-timer by Rakell.

The tie lasted only 1:58 before Howden and Jimmy Vesey combined on a beauty of a goal. After Howden worked the puck to Marc Staal at the left point, he circled around to the weak side, and when Staal flung one toward Vesey parked in the slot, Vesey gave it one touch over to a wide-open Howden, who drove it into an open net for the third goal of his rookie campaign.
"He's been good," Quinn said of Howden, who in the third period had a scary collision with Jacob Larsson after being crosschecked beside the Anaheim net. "He's been really good."
His goal held up until the final minute, when Ducks captain Ryan Getzlaf wound up to sell a shot from the top of the right circle, then sent a slap pass over to Rakell below the left circle for a one-timer that Georgiev had no chance of stopping.
"The best thing is that the game still keeps going," Georgiev said. "You know there are lots of chances coming in overtime. So try to just forget about it and keep going. I like that I stayed focused."
So did Quinn. "He really competed hard and made some big saves for us. (The Ducks) haven't won in a while and they were pushing hard."
Given where the Rangers were following a flat performance in Chicago to open the trip and a stinging last-minute loss three days later in L.A., battling back to grab the last two games on the road made for a good feeling as the team boarded their plane home.
Eight of the Rangers' next 12 games are back home at the Garden, beginning on Sunday against Jack Eichel and the Buffalo Sabres.
"I'm proud of our guys the way we managed to fight through and get four points in the last two games," Quinn said. "Not only that we got four points but the progress we made and what we're doing. Our guys do feel good, and they should feel good.
"This is a long haul, it's a long season, we're not even a month into it. We've fought through some adversity, we started 0-3 and here we are 5-7-1 and winning two in a row. So let's keep moving forward. Let's keep building on it."
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