Preview: Rangers Host Vegas in First Meeting of the Season

GOLDEN KNIGHTS at RANGERS, 12:30 p.mMSG, 98.7 FM
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The good news, David Quinn said, is that the Rangers get right back at it following a tough loss on Friday night in which they let a three-goal lead get away. Gerard Gallant might be thinking exactly the same thing.
There will be two ornery teams looking for a measure of redemption when the Rangers and the Vegas Golden Knights meet at Madison Square Garden on Sunday afternoon.
The Rangers play Game 2 of a three-game Garden homestand looking to bounce back from Game 1, which they led 3-0 but had to settle for one point in a 4-3 overtime loss to Arizona. At the same time, Gallant's Golden Knights went through much the same ringer across the Hudson River, seeing a pair of three-goal leads wiped out in a 5-4 OT loss to the Devils.
Entering the game against the defending Western Conference champs, the Rangers are 2-5-2 in their last nine matches overall, but on home ice they are 8-1-2 since the end of October, having secured at least a point in 10 of those last 11, including Friday's overtime loss in which they grabbed one point, felt they should have grabbed two, and Quinn said "boy it doesn't feel like we got anything."
"It was a good skate today, got the legs going - it's kind of like our morning skate for tomorrow," Tony DeAngelo said on Saturday after the Rangers practiced in Westchester. "We know we've got to have a good game after last night. I'm confident we'll be ready."

Quinn is confident that Adam McQuaid will be ready to rejoin the Rangers after nearly two months on the shelf. McQuaid has been sidelined for 21 games, since leaving the Oct. 25 game in Chicago after the first period with a lower-body injury, but the big blueliner has had no restrictions in practice over the past week.
"He's a guy that moves the puck well, that gives us a good physical presence, is good defensively," Quinn said. "He's a guy that we traded for because we believe in him, and we know he can make us a better team, and we've missed him. So it's going to be good to have him back."
McQuaid's injury occurred in just his eighth game as a Ranger after coming over from Boston in a September trade. A year ago, a broken leg suffered in game No. 6 of the season cost him three months. "It's too bad," Quinn said of the timing of the injury. "He was doing some good things for us, and you get traded and you want to make a good impression, get right in there and be part of the team. So it was an unfortunate injury, but it's good to have him back."
He'll be joined in the lineup by Lias Andersson, the rookie who sat out Friday's game as a healthy scratch but will draw back in for his 17th game out of 18 since being called up from Hartford.
And this comes one game after the Rangers got Mats Zuccarello and Pavel Buchnevich back from the injured list, and received an immediate impact from both. Buchnevich scored only four minutes into his return, on a power play that Zuccarello helped draw, and then Zuccarello made the play on Kevin Hayes' goal that gave the Blueshirts a 2-0 lead after 20 minutes.
"Two guys with that kind of skill, they both can score, and in the first 10 minutes they both chipped in with a big play apiece last night," DeAngelo said. "Getting those two guys back is huge, and we'll keep building off that."
Hayes was one of four Rangers - along with Mika Zibanejad, Jesper Fast and Matt Beleskey - who stayed off the ice on Saturday for a maintenance day, though for Hayes it came less than 24 hours after a jarring collision put an early end to his night. With just over three minutes to play in Friday's game, Hayes went off balance driving the net and collided square with the backboards, and did not play in overtime. Quinn said on Saturday that the center - who had a goal and an assist against the Coyotes, and has six points (3-3-6) over his last three games - was "a little sore, but I think he'll be able to go" on Sunday.
Hayes scored one of three power-play goals for the Rangers on Friday in a game in which they went on seven power plays, more than they had in their previous five games combined.
"We executed last night. I think we hadn't been bad, maybe just on a little bit of a cold streak, but last night the pucks were going in and we moved them well," said DeAngelo, who logged 4:33 of power-play time against Arizona. "We just started to execute, and we've got to keep that going; the power play is such a big thing."
"It's positive, considering the way things had been going," Quinn said. "I thought we did a good job moving our feet. We've got to continue to do that. But we've also got to continue to work on finishing games, and being in a mindset where no matter what happens, you keep playing. Don't get down on yourself, you finish the job. That's something that we're going to continue to harp on a work on, and we're going to get out of it."
The Golden Knights have won nine of their last 12 games (9-2-1), but still will be out for redemption of their own, in the third game of their four-game road trip. On Friday in Newark they held leads of 3-0 and 4-1 before allowing four unanswered goals and losing in overtime, 5-4. "I think when we got up 3-0, the boys thought it was over and we just stopped skating," Gallant said after the game.
Max Pacioretty sat out against New Jersey with an undisclosed injury, but the Knights did get back a key forward in Paul Stastny, who had missed the previous 30 games since an Oct. 8 hit from Buffalo's Jack Eichel sidelined him with a lower-body injury.

NUMBERS GAME

The Rangers' three power-play goals on Friday night were the most the team had scored in a game in 13 months, since going 3-for-5 in a win over Columbus on Nov. 6, 2017.
Vegas' power play, ranked last in the League through 15 games, has scored at least once in 10 of their last 14 matches and has climbed to 15th overall at 20.5 percent.
The Golden Knights allow an average of 27.9 shots on goal per game, tied for second-fewest in the League entering Saturday's games.

PLAYERS TO WATCH

Filip Chytil, playing with Mika Zibanejad and Mats Zuccarello at even strength, picked up a first-period assist on Buchnevich's power-play goal, and finished with five shot attempts (and three blocks) in 16:54. "He makes a great play on that goal," Quinn said Saturday. "Every time he's got the puck you feel good, you feel like something good is going to happen."
On Dec. 6, William Karlsson became the first player to reach 100 points for the Golden Knights; on Friday night Jonathan Marchessault became the second, collecting a pair of assists for points No. 100 and 101 in his 111th game for Vegas. Karlsson (13-13-26) and Marchessault (12-14-26) share the team lead in scoring.

WHADDYA SAY?

"We had a great view from the bench - you could put that puck there a hundred times and that's not going in. You want to talk about everything sitting pretty for him, and it hit the post and went in. It was destiny that that thing was going in. It's a 1-on-3 and he's literally on the (outside) hashmarks. It's not like you blame your goalie for it, it wasn't a bad goal, it was an unbelievable goal by him. The thing was a knuckler, the thing was on edge. If you put a thousand pucks there, he couldn't do it one more time." - David Quinn on Oliver Ekman-Larsson's game-tying goal for the Coyotes, when he blasted a puck sitting on its edge that knuckled in with 3:01 remaining
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