OK, so it wasn’t the offensive explosion that the Rangers were hoping for now that they have their full roster intact for just the second game in the past 10 weeks.
But the Blueshirts managed to pull off a 4-1 victory over the Ducks on Tuesday night at the Garden despite being outshot, 44-20. They have now taken the first two of this four-game homestand against Western Conference teams after struggling at the Garden for more than a month.
“If you want to play a high-tempo, fast game, you have to roll your lines quickly, you have to keep your shifts short and you have to play with pace,” coach Alain Vigneault, who picked up his 600th career win, said before the game. “That’s what we’re going to try to do.”
The Rangers (34-18-1) had just gotten Kevin Hayes back after the third-line center missed the previous five games with a presumed left-knee injury. He rejoined his line with Michael Grabner and J.T. Miller, which had been so effective in the past.
“With Kevin right now, I think what we have is real good balance on all our lines,” Vigneault and said.
The Ducks (28-17-10) were on the third leg of a six-game road trip, which had started 0-1-1 during their two-game swing through Florida. Yet the physical, big-bodied squad wasn’t being taken lightly.
The third period started with Derek Stepan getting plowed face-first into the boards near the Anaheim bench by Logan Shaw. He was OK, and Shaw wasn’t called for a penalty for what surely looked like a hit from behind.
On the ensuing 4-on-4 — resulting from a Jimmy Vesey-Joseph Cramarossa shoving match — Miller made a great cross-ice pass to Grabner, who got his team-leading 24th goal of the season when his wrist shot hit the crossbar and went in, giving his team a 3-1 lead with just over 16 minutes to play.
The Rangers were called for two suspect penalties thereafter, first a hold on Chris Kreider, and then a delay-of-game on Hayes, when his clearing attempt clearly hit the glass behind the Rangers’ bench. But they killed off both penalties, and kept the two-goal cushion going into the final minutes.
Grabner ended it with his 25th into the empty net with 18.5 seconds remaining to make it 4-1.
The Rangers had been outworked for the majority of the opening 40 minutes, but went up 2-0 when Mats Zuccarello got his 11th of the season just 66 seconds into the second period. Very soon thereafter, they also had chances to extend the lead, but Anaheim goalie John Gibson made some breathtaking saves. The first was a dramatic glove stop on a Michael Grabner breakaway, and it was followed moments later with a great blocker save on an open backdoor chance for Jimmy Vesey.
The Ducks responded with a goal from Jakob Silfverberg at 6:14 — coming off a bad turnover behind the Rangers net from rookie Brady Skjei — to make it 2-1 going into the third. By then, Anaheim had out-shot the Rangers, 32-13, and out-attempted them, 56-24.
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