Recap: Tony DeAngelo Scores Shootout-Winner to Lead Rangers Past Bruins

David Quinn said "I just wanted to shake the lines up" when the Rangers entered the third period. It gave his team a new look, in more ways than one.
Down by a pair after 40 minutes at Madison Square Garden, the Rangers scored twice in the final 10½ minutes to tie, then outlasted the Bruins in a seven-round shootout to wrest away a 4-3 win over Boston on Wednesday night.
Filip Chytil banged in the game-tying goal on a power play, and with Alexandar Georgiev right in his comfort zone in the extra sessions, Tony DeAngelo grabbed the shootout advantage by roofing a forehand over Jaroslav Halak before David Krejci shot wide of Georgiev to end it.
The Rangers earned points for the second straight home game and the 11th time in their last 15 at the Garden - with the homestand set to continue on Friday night when the 1994 Stanley Cup Champions will be coming home for a party.

That one "will be pretty wild," Mika Zibanejad said - so consider Wednesday night's game a nice little warmup for the vocal cords. Kevin Hayes' goal got the comeback and the crowd buzzing 9:24 into the third, and Chytil's power-play tally 3:17 later raised the volume some more until it reached its peak with Georgiev leaping from his crease in celebration.

But in the Rangers' room afterward, the Broadway Hat took its perch atop DeAngelo's head. The 23-year-old blueliner, who sat out a pair of games at the end of last week, assisted on one of the goals in the third period, though he had a major hand in both. He also led the Rangers with 24:06 on ice, and with five shots on goal, although two other Rangers matched that number on a night when the Blueshirts put 39 shots on Halak's net. He has points in back-to-back games since his return to the lineup and is now tied for second among Rangers defensemen in scoring.
His shootout attempt was only the second of his career; he improved to 2-for-2.
"I kind of did the same move as last time," DeAngelo said after the game, smiling all the way. "A lot of guys were shooting blocker, so I figured I'd try to switch it up a bit. Instead of right to left, left to right."
"He's a talented player," Quinn said. "It's fun to watch him play and take advantage of his opportunity."
But if DeAngelo can be considered the Rangers' latest secret weapon in a shootout, word is out on Georgiev. The rookie netminder has faced the first three shootouts of his career this season and won them all. He has stopped 11 of 14 shooters he has faced, including six out of seven Bruins on Wednesday night.
"I love shootouts," Georgiev said. "I try to practice, compete with the guys when we have a chance in practice. And then in a game it's also a lot of fun." But did he come to love shootouts before or after he proved to have a knack for them?
"A little bit of both," he admitted. "I always try to be good at those, because it's a lot of fun 1-on-1 against a player."

Both players pulled off the rare feat of overshadowing Mika Zibanejad, who scored once again for the Rangers, on a one-time blast of Mats Zuccarello's feed in the first period. It was Zibanejad's 10th goal in the last eight games, and 18th point over the last 10. Zuccarello's assist gave him points in each of his last nine games, and Pavel Buchnevich picked up a helper on each of the Rangers' goals in the third.
Halak finished with 36 saves, six of them in the overtime just to get the Bruins to the shootout before he took the loss for his fifth straight game, two of them to the Rangers. Danton Heinen, David Pastrnak and Patrice Bergeron each scored for the Bruins, all in the second period to answer Zibanejad's goal and then some, staking the Bruins - who entered the game 19-1-2 with the lead after 40 minutes, and to that point had allowed just two goals over their last eight periods - to a 3-1 lead at second intermission.
The Rangers come out of the dressing room with some lineup tweaks - Jimmy Vesey moved up to play beside Hayes, and each center other than Zibanejad had a new left winger - and the objective at that point was to "just look forward and kind of put that period behind us," Zibanejad said. "Trying to think about it too much was not going to help us in the third."
"There wasn't a lot of emotion in between periods, and all we talked about was, listen, we've just got to move past that, we can't let a bad second period get in the way of the third period," Quinn said. "Let's go play some hockey and see what happens."

What happened was, DeAngelo connected with Pavel Buchnevich on a 125-foot pass straight up the gut, and after Buchnevich pushed the puck wide of Halak's net and Vesey followed the play and got it back in front, Hayes made the deposit into an open net for his 13th of the year with 10:36 on the clock.
DeAngelo didn't pick up an assist despite starting that play, but he did when the Rangers tied it with 7:19 to play. After Long Beach native and ex-BU blueliner Charlie McAvoy was shown a seat for boarding Zibanejad, Buchnevich fired one from the blue line off Halak and the post, and Chytil found it in his feet with all the net to shoot at.
Chytil's 10th of the season made him the eighth NHL rookie to hit the double-digit mark in goals this season.
"That power-play goal was huge," Quinn said.

"The Bruins are a good team, a real good team, and they had a good push in the second," DeAngelo said. "I thought we controlled the first, and then we came out and had a real strong third. It was important for us."
Once the 60 minutes were up, the rest was the goaltenders' show. First Halak put his pad onto a Chytil breakaway midway through the 3-on-3 session, then with the clock dipping under 90 seconds, the goaltenders traded remarkable glove saves: Georgiev snared one when Sean Kuraly managed to bat a logo-high centering pass on goal, then Halak, 1-on-1 with Zibanejad and appearing out of the play, sprawled out to prevent one of the league's hottest players from winning it.
Only Zibanejad and Brad Marchand could beat the goalies in the shootout before DeAngelo's attempt broke the tie.
"We kept working," Zibanejad said, "so it was nice."