By Dexter Foley
The New York Rangers were able to beat the New York Islanders in the Stadium Series in dramatic fashion. The outdoor matchup resulted in a 6-5 overtime finish, but the game didn’t look like it would even go into overtime until the very end.
In the first minute of the game, the Rangers opened up the scoring with an Erik Gustafsson goal. The fun didn’t last very long for them though as the Islanders responded with four unanswered goals, three of them coming in the first period. Brock Nelsson, Bo Horvat, and Mathew Barzal all notched one in to jump up 3-1 going into the second period. When that period started, the Islanders scored that fourth goal thanks to Anders Lee to expand their lead. This was around the time that things started to turn around.
New York Rangers Rallied Late
Vincent Trocheck of the Rangers scored back-to-back goals in the second period to bring the score to 4-3 heading into the third and final period. For the second period in a row though, the Islanders cut their momentum down with a goal in the first two minutes of the period, this time watching Alexander Romanov net one. From that point on, it was all Rangers. Chris Kreider and Mika Zibanejad scored back-to-back power play goals in the final five minutes of regulation to force overtime. Then, just 10 seconds into overtime, Artemi Panarin netted the game winning goal. A goal that had to be reviewed for a while due to the net getting knocked around in the process.
The game ended up being a massive success in the eyes of the fans, and weirdly enough, the stadium saw more goals scored in this game than points scored in seven different games from both the New York Jets and the New York Giants in the NFL this past season. Yes, that’s a real statistic. MetLife stadium hasn’t always been nice to New York teams as of late, but both squads here had a wonderful showing, even with the Islanders struggling to close this one out.
