Vesey's Pair Propels Rangers to Fifth Straight in Win Over Bruins

Jimmy Vesey entered Wednesday's game against Boston with two goals through 16 games thus far this season.
He matched that in a span of 29 seconds in the first period to lift the Rangers to a 4-2 win for their fifth victory in a row.
"It was good to get rewarded offensively tonight," Vesey said. "[I'm] playing with two really good players, so it's easy for me out there."

With the teams tied, 1-1, Ryan McDonagh sent a shot from the point on goal that was batted down in front. Mika Zibanejad got the puck to Pavel Buchnevich, and while his shot was stopped, the puck bounced onto the stick of Vesey who buried it to give the Rangers the 2-1 lead at 14:41.

With the building still buzzing, Vesey notched his second when he once against found a loose puck at the side of the net, this time off a shot by Kevin Shattenkirk from just above the faceoff dot for his fourth of the season.
"Any team needs contributions from all four lines," said Vesey, who scored the two fastest goals by a Ranger since Jaromir Jagr on Nov. 14, 2006. "I consider myself a goal scorer. I've been that my whole life. I think I've had the chances some games and it hasn't necessarily fallen for me. Got a couple greasy ones tonight and maybe it'll take off from here."
Buchnevich got the scoring going for New York midway through the period. No. 89 skated around Zdeno Chara at the bottom of the circle, cut to the net on his backhand and quickly went to the forehand and fired a shot top shelf over Tuukka Rask at 9:53 of the first.

Boston, though, answered immediately on a goal by David Pastrnak just 21 seconds later. Patrice Bergeron scored Boston's second goal 6:44 into the third period before Rick Nash iced the game with an empty-net goal with 7.7 seconds left.
Collectively, the Rangers turned in one of their best 60-minute efforts of the year at both ends of the ice. Defensively, New York gave the Bruins little to work with and killed off all four penalties they took, and are now perfect in their last 17 times they've been shorthanded.
"There were a lot of things I liked about this game," said coach Alain Vigneault, who earned his 200th win with the Rangers. "I liked our start. I liked the fact that the goals we scored, we scored by going to the tough areas. Buchy went to the tough areas, Jimmy's both goals were right from in tight. PK came up big for us tonight, and this was probably the best Hank has looked as far as in control. There were a lot of good things about tonight."

Henrik Lundqvist made 31 saves, including 25 of 26 over the final two periods. He's been in net for all five victories during this streak and is now 7-4-2 on the year.
"I felt like we played a really smart game," said Lundqvist, who has made at least 30 saves in five of his last 10 games. "We set the tone first period. Great energy. After they tied the game, we raised it another level and the guys made some really big plays for us."
The Rangers moved above the .500 mark for the first time this season, and Lundqvist admitted to the positive change he and his teammates feel now that the disappointing start to the year has given way to success.
"We're moving in the right direction," Lundqvist said. "We're back in the race. Just have to continue to push ourselves here. There's no secret it's so much more fun to be at the rink, go to practice [and] travel when you're winning and guys are smiling. We're going to continue to smile when we get more wins."