Rangers Comeback Falls Short In 4-3 Loss To Flyers

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Here is our recap of the Rangers 4-3 loss to the Flyers.

Top Line – Whether or not you think Jesper Fast deserves to be on the top line for this current iteration of the Rangers, he has been the perfect complement to linemates Chris Kreider and Mika Zibanejad. Fast brings the never-say-die attitude to a duo of highly skilled and motivated players. This line would score all three goals in the losing effort, with each player extending their respective point streaks.

Mika Zibanejad got the Rangers on the board in the first period, tying the game after Philadelphia’s Travis Konecny gave the Flyers a 1-0 lead. Zibanejad took Jesper Fast’s pass in the neutral zone, faked a shot and then slid the puck through the legs of goaltender Alex Lyon. The goal was Zibanejad’s 26th of the season, which is a career best for the Swedish center, as well as extending his points streak to six games, and points in eight of his last ten. Mika will be this team’s number one center for the foreseeable future, and as long as he’s healthy, he will be a top point producer for the Blueshirts.

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As for Jesper Fast, he wasn’t content with just helping out on goals and picked up a pair of tallies that brought the Rangers to within one on both goals. On his first goal, Fast won the board battle in the corner and threw the puck towards the net where it banked in off of Ivan Provorov.

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Fast got the game to 4-3 early in the third, depositing the rebound of Rob O’Gara’s shot from the half-wall. The goals were the 12th and 13th of the year for Fast, who tied his personal best year in points with 30 in the game against the Flyers. Quickie is going to be a part of this team in the coming years, and his work ethic and “never take a shift off” attitude is something that the young players entering the lineup should learn from and impart into their own games.

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Line Juggling – For everything that you can criticize Alain Vigneault for, add constant line juggling to the list. Cody McLeod played 6.7% of the game playing alongside the significantly higher-skilled Pavel Buchnevich and Ryan Spooner. Meanwhile, Vlad Namestnikov was spending time playing on the fourth line with David Desharnais and Paul Carey. If you are juggling lines early in the season to try and find chemistry between potential linemates, that’s fine. But when Cody McLeod is taking the spot of Vlad Namestnikov in a “meaningless” game with two weeks left in the season, there really is no defense for such an asinine decision.

Left Wing Lock

Alexandar Georgiev – The young goaltender made some stellar saves to keep his team in the game, including this sequence in the first period with his team already trailing. Georgiev has shown he has what it takes to back up Henrik Lundqvist next season, and he did so last night with Ondrej Pavelec backing up the young Bulgarian goaltender. Unfortunately for Pavelec, he will be remembered as the guy who gave his crease to Georgiev; but with the Rangers having a bevy of young and talented netminders in the pipeline, Pavelec’s days in the Rangers sweater were numbered.

Next Game: The Rangers host the Buffalo Sabres on Saturday night in one of their final home games of the season. Puck drops at 7!

LETS GO RANGERS!!

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