The Rangers, thanks to a Jimmy Vesey goal, defeated the Baby Pens 3-2 Sunday. With Pittsburgh resting most of their key regulars, it was like a pre-season game or contest against Scranton-Wilkes Barre, but New York ends the regular season with a win. Now, it's time to face Montreal in the first round of the playoffs.
Some quick thoughts and blog logistics:
- Vesey scored his first goal since March 18 and his second since February 16. But the hands he showed to corral the hard pass from Mike Zibanejad and skill in beating Tristan Jarry with a backhand might have secured his role on Zib-Rick Nash second line.
- Ryan McDonagh's lower-body injury sure looked healed last night. He darted up ice and beat Jarry with a wrist shot, showing good jump on his skates. In addition, McDonagh helped set up Derek Stepan's PPG.
- The power play finished the year strong, going 13-for-40 the last 15 games of the regular season.
- Good for Magnus Hellberg in notching his first career NHL win.
- Kevin Klein had an egregious turnover resulting in Pittsburgh's second goal. He clearly is on the bubble for a top-six, d-man role in the playoffs. Especially since i thought Brendan Smith played fairly well last night.
- Congrats to Mats Zuccarello for being named the Steven McDonald Extra Effort Award winner for the third time, well deserved. Same to Ryan McDonald for being named the team's player of the year. Several others also could have won the award but hard to argue against McDonagh.
#NYR @zuccarello36 gets the 2016-17 Steven McDonald Extra Effort Award presented by @lenoxhill. #TogetherWeAre104 pic.twitter.com/XTeJMKkzFt
— New York Rangers (@NYRangers) April 9, 2017
- Per Eric Engels, who did me a major solid last night helping me with some Montreal info for the upcoming blogs, since March 1, the Rangers went 8-7-4 while Montreal finished 12-5-1--including a 4-1 win over NYR on Mar. 4. Now toss it out, because New York has nothing to play for the last five weeks of the regular season.
Blog logistics: Passover starts tonight with the first two days ending Wednesday night. I wrote a pair of blogs late yesterday that will be submitted for uploading on the site while I am out. The first is the annual Behind the Numbers blog, which go up Tuesday. The second is the series preview and that will be posted Wednesday.