Recap: Blueshirts Bury Hawks with Five-Goal Third

CHICAGO --With two periods in the books in Wednesday night's game, no one inside United Center could have seen this kind of third period coming, nor could the Chicago Blackhawks summon any kind of answer for it once it was under way.
Locked in a 1-all tie after 40 minutes that the Rangers described afterward as a little sloppy by all involved, the Blueshirts came out blazing to start the third, overrunning the Blackhawks with five goals in the final frame to power their way to a 6-3 victory over Chicago in the first of a two-game road trip.
Maybe it wasn't a game that David Quinn would call a Picasso, but the third period contained more than enough artistry to send the Rangers to their fifth win in the last six games, and their sixth in a row on the road. And now they turn their focus onto Friday night, when they will have a chance to tie a franchise record with their seventh straight road win -- and more importantly, to go into the Carolina Hurricanes' home rink and pick up precious ground on the current holders of the second Wild Card spot in the East.
"Our guys are excited about the game Friday night," Quinn said after Wednesday's win, "because it's going to be a playoff game for us in a lot of ways."

First, though, they had to take care of business against the foundering Blackhawks, and a Ranger team that has found different ways of winning landed on another one Wednesday night. What appeared to be a stalemate at second intermission was actually a game sitting on a spring: The teams combined for seven goals on 31 shots in the final 20 minutes alone.
All the while, way up high in a United Center suite, the Rangers' moms were celebrating every single one from their boys in Blue. The opening night of Moms Trip 2020 was an evening that began with Trish Strome, Ryan's mom, reading out the Rangers' starting six in the visitors' dressing room -- "Move. Him. The puck." -- and ended with six different Rangers in the scorer's column on another overwhelming night from the KZB Line.
Chris Kreider, Mika Zibanejad and Pavel Buchnevich each scored and combined for eight points on the night -- all of it coming during a third period in which the Rangers poured 19 shots on Robin Lehner's goal. Artemi Panarin (his 30th goal), Ryan Strome and Filip Chytil also scored for the Blueshirts, who racked up six goals in a game for the seventh time in 2019-20, something they did only twice a season ago.
"We put ourselves in a position to win a hockey game by playing 20 good minutes of hockey, because we certainly didn't play 40 good minutes of hockey when the game started," Quinn said. "Rarely do you get that opportunity in this league. Our guys responded."
And backing the whole thing was Igor Shesterkin, returning from an ankle injury to make his first start since a Feb. 11 win in Winnipeg. All he did in his first game back was make 37 saves, and make himself the first Ranger goaltender ever to win seven out of his first eight NHL games.
He was at his best at the end of the first period and throughout the second, during which he made 20 saves in a span of 23 minutes of game time and set up his teammates to regroup at second intermission and take the thing over in the third.
"We weren't able to get a lot going on the first two. There wasn't a lot of flow, I think on either side," said Kreider, who along with Zibanejad had a goal and two assists, and now has 18 goals and 32 points over his last 30 games. "We talked about some of the things that we wanted to be doing, some adjustments we wanted to make -- moving pucks and diving to the net and getting to the middle and getting inside, instead of just being kept to the outside and playing perimeter hockey. I thought we did a better job of that beginning with the third."
Dominik Kubalik, who has come out of nowhere to score 25 goals for the Blackhawks this season, got a pair against Shesterkin, his fellow 24-year-old rookie, and Drake Caggiula scored the other for Chicago, which lost for the eighth time in 10 games (2-6-2).
Chytil beat Lehner (35 saves) through the five-hole just 1:58 into the match, and put another one through the goaltender early in the second before Jonathan Toews swooped in to tap it off the goal line. Mere moments after that, Kubalik scored his first off a Patrick Kane feed to tie the score at 2:29 - what felt like a two-goal swing that put the Rangers on their heels the remainder of the second.
"Listen, you've got to win games when you're not playing great," Quinn said. "I thought we actually did a good job kind of changing gears and playing a much better, purposeful third period."
Buchnevich broke the deadlock 2:33 after second intermission on a play set up by Kreider, when he retrieved his own miss behind the net, absorbed contact from Kubalik as he won the puck and fed Buchnevich cutting in the slot. Strome scored 1:28 later -- on a power play drawn by the speed of Julien Gauthier, who was making his Rangers debut after a trade with Carolina on Tuesday -- and after Kubalik trimmed it back to a one-goal game, Kreider restored the cushion with some speed and skill of his own.
He collected Zibanejad's pass in his skates in full stride at the Chicago line, maintaining enough speed to burn rookie Adam Boqvist out wide and then tuck a backhander under Lehner at 8:48 of the third.
"Big-time," Quinn said of Kreider's influence on this game. "Every time they closed the gap we answered, which was huge, and that line was immense in the third period. And Kreids has had a great run here, he's playing great hockey for us."
Panarin's goal with 10:19 left benefitted from both referees somehow missing Dylan Strome's drag-down of Adam Fox -- play continuing allowed Panarin to swat home a Chicago giveaway to reach the 30-goal mark for the third time in his five NHL seasons. It upped his point streak to seven games; Zibanejad, who capped the scoring with 6:23 to play, stretched his own streak to five games, while Strome's reached six.
These streaking Rangers -- 8-3 since the All-Star break -- now embark on an even more crucial stretch of schedule: Four of their next six games are against division rivals they are trying to hunt down in the race for the playoffs -- the Hurricanes, Islanders, and two against the Flyers. Of all those teams, the Rangers are the ones gathering momentum.
"There's a really good feeling that locker room," Quinn said. "I've talked about this for a while now: We've really become a team over the last two months."