Recap: Rangers Head Home With Another Sweep

RALEIGH, N.C. -- In one way, goals and wins are like your children, in the sense that you love them no matter what. In another way they are not like your children at all, in that you don't love them all equally.
There is reason for Friday night's 5-2 win over the Carolina Hurricanes, for instance, to hold a favored place in the Rangers' hearts right now, because of their openness beforehand about the magnitude of this game, and the way they rose to the occasion during it. Because this one came against a division rival they are hunting down in the playoff race, because it came in a playoff atmosphere before a capacity crowd, and because it came by way of a complete 60-minute effort from up and down their lineup.
And because it came with the people who love them most watching from the stands: a Blue-clad traveling party of moms that witnessed their boys in Blueshirts complete a clean sweep of the Rangers' 2020 Moms Trip. And because this latest victory gave the Blueshirts their seventh consecutive win on the road, matching a franchise record that has been reached only twice before in Rangers history, and not since 1978.

In the end it was their second time in a week flying home with a sweep of a road trip in their suitcases, and they swept the season series from Carolina for a staggering sixth time in the last nine years. The finale of this one was a game that even two days beforehand David Quinn had called "a playoff game for us" -- and when it became clear from the opening shift that both teams felt that way and intended to play like it, the Rangers answered the bell about as well as they have all season.
"I'm just so proud of our guys the way we competed right from the drop of the puck," Quinn said afterward. "Five guys working together. Five-man gaps and five-man packs. I'm just really, really proud of our guys -- just a gutsy effort."
"It was a huge game," said Brady Skjei, "and you could tell we really, really wanted it."
It was a huge goal that Skjei scored, too, coming in the second period and holding up as the game-winner -- and one of two Ranger goals on this night that will win no beauty pageants but count all the same. Mika Zibanejad assisted on Skjei's tally, one of the centerman's two helpers to go along with a goal of his own on the night, while Artemi Panarin and Ryan Strome each had a goal and an assist as all three of those players kept their personal point streaks going.
Panarin's assist was his 50th of the season, and his 400th point in the NHL. Zibanejad's three-point night, meanwhile, gave him seven points on the two-game trip to against the Blackhawks and Hurricanes, during which he was named the game's First Star in each team's building.
"It's been a fun trip and a very important trip for us," said Strome, whose seven-game point streak is a career best. "You look at our last two road trips, things could have easily gone differently; we swept both of them."
They haven't lost on the road since Jan. 11. Overall, they are 9-3 since the All-Star break, and have a chance to build on it right away back home on Saturday night, when the San Jose Sharks come to Broadway for their lone visit this season and "the Garden," in Strome's words, "is gonna be rocking."
Until then, put another W in the bank for Igor Shesterkin, who made 27 stops this time to pick up his eighth victory in his ninth NHL start. The rookie earned both of the wins on this latest road trip, and in both of the games he made a very similar kind of mesmerizing save - moving to his right, somehow adjusting to a deflection, and stabbing his catching glove out to his left.
On Friday night it came early in the game, just at the end of a Carolina power play 14 minutes in, and it had Nino Niederreiter staring at the rafters unable to shake a look of complete disbelief. Less than three minutes later, Zibanejad blocked a Jordan Staal shot at the Ranger line, raced past him for a breakaway, and flicked an unassisted goal, his 27th of the season, into the top shelf behind Petr Mrazek (31 saves) to give the Rangers the lead that Shesterkin had taken away.
"Those are game-changers," Quinn said of that save, and that sequence of events. "That being said, I thought our guys felt good about what we were doing leading up to that. … We just played at a pace, we played with a bit of physicality to us, and it only continued after that."
Following Brock McGinn's goal - in his 300th NHL game - to make it 1-1 at 3:25 of the second, the Rangers pulled away for good on a pair of bounces off Carolina skates. Jesper Fast was trying to slip a return pass to Panarin in the slot but found Brett Pesce's instep and a vacated net instead at 9:48; Skjei had lost an edge behind the net and hit the eject button, flinging the puck in front, where it went in off Jake Gardiner's skate at 16:09.
"These types of games, most goals are not going to be textbook, are not going to be pretty plays," Skjei said. "Obviously Quickie got a good bounce, and I got a really fortunate bounce, and those type of goals, you need them.
"But those goals, it starts with guys going to the net, crashing the net, and playing in those hard areas that allow those goals to go in. You don't score them without that."
Those goals gave the Rangers a 3-1 lead to take into second intermission, and Panarin added to it on a power play just 1:10 into the third - his 31st of the year, matching his career high from three seasons ago with Chicago. Sebastian Aho scored for Carolina at 5:12 - his 11th goal of an 11-game point streak - but the Rangers "played a smart (third) period," Quinn said, never letting off the gas until Strome won a footrace from Andrei Svechnikov to score into an empty net 1:48 before the end.
It put the Rangers and their moms onto their airplane back to New York with four points on the Moms Trips - and by night's end, sitting just five points back of the Wild Card Blue Jackets, with a pair of games in hand and the Sharks coming to the Garden on Saturday night.
"By no stretch of the imagination are we anywhere near where we need to be. There is a lot of work to do," Quinn said. "But we've put ourselves in a position late in the hockey season where our season is still very, very meaningful."