NEW YORK — Vincent Trocheck swatted home a bouncing puck at 7:24 of double overtime to give the Rangers a 4-3 win and a 2-0 series lead over the Hurricanes.
Trocheck drew a penalty to Brady Skjei to get the Rangers on the power play and then smacked the puck through Frederik Andersen’s pads off a scramble to end it.
Jake Guentzel scored twice for Carolina and Alexis Lafrenière had two for the Rangers, who rallied to tie on Chris Kreider’s power-play goal 6:07 into the third. The game had good stretches for both teams, a bit of nastiness and, ultimately Trocheck’s winner against his old team to give the Rangers the 2-0 series lead as the teams head to Raleigh for Game 3 on Thursday.
Dmitri Orlov’s deflection of Brady Skjei’s shot gave the Canes a 2-1 lead with 5.4 seconds left in the first and Guentzel buried a Sebastian Aho feed with 1:42 to go in the second, sending Carolina into the second intermission with a 3-2 lead.
Both teams had excellent chances to break the 3-3 tie in the third, with Carolina cycling pucks well for a few minutes and putting a couple of dangerous tries on Shesterkin, who finished with 54 saves.
VINCENT TROCHECK WINS IT IN OVERTIME FOR THE RANGERS 🚨 pic.twitter.com/ugRv12UU5G
— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) May 8, 2024
In a game where both goalies gave up at least three goals you wouldn’t expect a duel, but Shesterkin and Andersen were very sharp, especially in overtime. Shesterkin denied Aho twice in the first OT and Andersen came up big on Mika Zibanejad and Lafrenière to help send it to a second overtime period.
Shesterkin’s best moments in the third came with the Rangers on the power play, oddly enough. He denied Brady Skjei on a 2-on-1 shorthanded rush inside of 10 minutes to go, then made three sharp saves on the Rangers power play that closed regulation — first on Seth Jarvis, then Aho and Jalen Chatfield on a separate rush.
Andersen wasn’t bad in regulation in Game 2 but definitely the shakier of the two goalies, especially on Kreider’s tying goal in the third. Andersen gave up a couple goals to the Islanders in the first round where he made the initial save but couldn’t secure the puck underneath him. He did the same in the third on Tuesday, making a good stop on Trocheck initially but Andersen could not find and cover the puck in his pads. Kreider dug it out and buried it.
Andersen giving up four in each of the first two games might prompt some talk of Carolina going to Pyotr Kochetkov for Game 3, though he was good enough through the overtimes.
Alexis Lafrenière pops off
It’s not like Lafrenière had been having a bad postseason before Tuesday, but his first two goals of the playoffs took his game to another level.
His first was a well-placed wrister that Andersen never saw, a patient play to gather the puck off a blocked shot, curl and snap one high to the short side with Alex Wennberg providing a screen.
And the second was a good net drive with the Hurricanes all crossed up defensively after Jaccob Slavin had led the previous rush. Lafrenière beat Martin Necas to the net front and tapped in Fox’s pass to tie the game 2-2 for a stretch in the second.
Lafrenière is up to seven points in the Rangers’ six playoff games, a far cry from the zeroes he put up in the team’s first-round loss to the Devils last spring.
Shesterkin didn’t seem rattled by Andrei Svechnikov’s leg-on-leg trip behind the Rangers net at 12:05 of the first — if anything, Shesterkin was just mad, as he went straight out of his crease to join the scrum around the Carolina forward to try and get a shot in. What that seemed to do, really, was get the Hurricanes back to their battle-heavy game below the hash marks, led by Svechnikov himself.
SVECHNIKOV TAKES A RUN AT IGOR AND WE GOT CHAOS 😱 pic.twitter.com/Eft3tygqK9
— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) May 7, 2024
The king of the Michigan goal did the hard work ahead of Guentzel’s tying score just 62 seconds after Svechnikov emerged from the penalty box. Svechnikov got body position on Braden Schneider for a take around the Rangers net, where he fed Sebastian Aho for a point shot that banked off Guentzel’s skate — the sort of lucky-break goal that the Canes work hard for.
The Garden crowd got to add another Hurricane to a growing list of visiting players to be booed every time they touched a puck, with Svechnikov joining Tony DeAngelo.
Playoff Guentzel arrives
Guentzel had an empty-net goal and three assists in Carolina’s first-round series win over the Islanders but he wasn’t a particularly forceful presence, especially in his usual spot around the opposing net. He changed that on Tuesday, bringing back some bad playoff memories for Ranger fans.
Guentzel’s first goal in Game 2 caromed off his skate but he worked hard for that break, getting position on K’Andre Miller at the net front and barely avoiding Shesterkin to find space for his redirect. And his second goal was all Aho, who kept possession with three Rangers on him along the wall to find Guentzel streaking down the slot for a one-timer that restored Carolina’s one-goal lead heading to the third.
In the 2022 first round, what we all remember is the Rangers rallying from a 3-1 series deficit to eliminate the Penguins on Artemi Panarin’s Game 7 overtime winner. But Guentzel, even playing two games without Sidney Crosby, nearly lifted the Penguins to advance with eight goals in the seven-game series. He’s now scored eight playoff goals in six games at Madison Square Garden.
The nastiness — and some flopping — increases
The Svechnikov encounter with Shesterkin certainly turned the heat up in Game 2 and it continued throughout, with a variety of extra whacks, shoves and even a few banana-peel falls to draw penalties.
Fox, not really known as an agitator, got the last word in a second-period scrum that started with Trocheck and Guentzel. As the players separated, Fox went in for a few words and reached out to Guentzel, who responded with a gloved shot — Fox went down like Mike Tyson swung on him and the Rangers negated a Canes power play. Fox also drew a trip on Svechnikov earlier in the second off a draw to start another Carolina power play and then collided with Seth Jarvis later in the middle period, sending Jarvis to the bench hunched over for a few minutes. Jarvis did return.
Jacob Trouba went for a huge hit on Necas in overtime and Necas either ducked or slipped to avoid it. Trouba launched himself into the wall and then gave it to Necas the next two times they were on the ice together, presumably for ducking out of a hit.
It was a former Ranger in DeAngelo and a former Cane in Trocheck who did much of the jawing in Game 2. After the Guentzel-Fox encounter, DeAngelo could be seen on ESPN’s camera saying to Miller, “I’ll fight you anytime.”
(Photo: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
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Courtesy : https://theathletic.com/5478002/2024/05/07/rangers-hurricanes-overtime-vincent-trocheck-igor-shesterkin/