Recap: Rangers' Late Push Falls Short

Perhaps what the Rangers liked best about their victory on Wednesday night over Toronto was the way they played with a lead and stayed on top of a highly skilled team right through to the end.
Two nights later the Rangers gave a glimpse, not for the first time this season, of what they are capable of when they are coming from behind. But the Rangers' ice-tilting third period and their rally up until the last horn fell just short on Friday night, and in any event it was little cushion for the hard landing of a 3-2 loss to the Buffalo Sabres in the third of a four-game homestand at Madison Square Garden.
For the second straight game Mika Zibanejad and Chris Kreider each scored for the Blueshirts - Zibanejad once again finishing with a goal and an assist for his 16th multi-point game - but this time both their goals came within the final three minutes of regulation time as the Rangers fought to claw back in the game.

The Rangers put 23 shots on Carter Hutton's net in the final 20 minutes alone, a season high for a single period, but in the end couldn't put that third one past him that would have completed this late charge.
The Rangers now turn their sights on Sunday evening's match with the Los Angeles Kings that will complete this four-game Garden stay, after which they will play eight of their next 10 matches off Broadway.
On Friday night, Zibanejad set the rally in motion by scoring with 2:53 left, and Kreider ramped up the tension with a power-play goal with 1:40 to go -- but by the time that all happened the Rangers had found themselves in a three-goal hole on scores in each period by Zemgus Girgensons, Sam Reinhart and ex-Ranger Jimmy Vesey, with terrific Jack Eichel passes setting up the last two of those for Buffalo.
Hutton, meanwhile, bounced back from a blowout loss in his Oct. 24 start at the Garden and held the Rangers off with 37 saves, 21 of them in the third.
Afterward, the Rangers weren't so much lamenting coming up short in the end, but falling behind earlier.
"They clog it up pretty good, basically just waiting for us to make our mistakes, and then they go. They have some skilled guys in that locker room and they made us pay for our mistakes today," Zibanejad said. "We didn't play as simple as we have been for the past couple weeks, and like we did the last game against Toronto. We didn't put ourselves in a good spot to win the game."
By the end of the game, the spot on Zibanejad's left was occupied by Artemi Panarin, with Kreider moving over to the right on a loaded-up top line that brought the Rangers within a goal. Quinn's corresponding move was to place Kaapo Kakko into Panarin's spot in the top six, and later among the six attackers with Georgiev pulled, the upshot of a night in which Kakko played seven minutes of his 14:29 in that third period, and was one of the Rangers' most noticeably dynamic players.
It was Kakko who drew the penalty on which Kreider scored, with Kakko assisting on his goal, his second point in the last three games. He finished with four shots of his own, too.
"I just thought he had a real good night," Quinn said. "He played with a lot of energy and an edge to his game; he played with some confidence. I liked his approach.
"I thought he did a good job throughout the game playing better and better as the game went along."
Something similar could be said of the Rangers, except that by the late stages the hole they dug was too deep. Girgensons opened the scoring 10:26 in, catching the Rangers changing at the end of a long but up to that point not especially threatening shift in the Blueshirts' end -- but it was Reinhart's goal, with 4:44 left in the second, that felt like more of a setback, because it came just as the Rangers appeared to be showing sparks in their game.
They had just completed a kill of a Panarin holding penalty - helped mightily by a spectacular post-to-post skate save from Alexandar Georgiev on Reinhart, the best of his 25 stops on the night and one that put a charge into the crowd - and were knocking on the door with back-to-back chances from Kreider and Kakko. Then, a turnover at the Buffalo line, Eichel floating a lead pass for Reinhart, and Reinhart burying a backhander upstairs for his 20th goal.
"That line was actually doing a good job -- they had hemmed them in, it was good shift," Quinn said. "But then we start their breakout."
Eichel found Vesey up the middle amid wholesale changes from both teams, but the pass of the night belonged to Panarin. With the clock ticking under three minutes to play, the Rangers' leading scorer skated past Evan Rodrigues and with his hip against the left wall heaved a pass with his backhand that was perfectly placed between the righthanded Zibanejad's skates for a tap-in at the far post.
With Georgiev on the bench in a 3-1 game, Kakko was first on a rebound and forced Rasmus Ristolainen to hook him on the hands; Kreider then made it a one-goal game off a scramble with 1:40 left, squeaking one through Hutton and over the line just before Henri Jokiharju could sweep it clear.
But that was as close as the Rangers would come, suffering only their fourth loss in their last 11 home games, with L.A. up next on Sunday.
"I think we've been doing a lot better job than we showed tonight," Zibanejad said. "I don't know if it's the time we have (with the puck), the way they back off, I don't know, but we didn't play our game, we didn't stick to the way we've been playing the last couple weeks. It wasn't good enough today."