Rangers 6, Blues 3

Derick Brassard, Mats Zuccarello and Kevin Hayes scored in the first period, and the NY Rangers beat the St Louis Blues 6-3 on Thursday night for their seventh straight victory.

The Rangers took it to the Blues early and often, then held on in a turnover filled second period to ultimately prevail 6-3 Thursday. Despite giving up three goals tonight, Henrik Lundqvist was solid once again, and turned this game in the Rangers favor with a ridiculous diving stick save during the first period.

“I have good linemates, and that makes it good chemistry”, Zuccarello said. “You can play really well and don’t get the good bounces and sometimes you get the bounces. It’s nice so hopefully we’ll keep it going”.

Consider Rangers center Derek Stepan a fan. As his teammates have said, his level of competition is at an all time high. However, the goal was disallowed after an officials’ review determined that Justin Williams was offside on the play. The sequence began with Brassard finding Zuccarello on the left wing with a diagonal pass. Zuccarello split Jay Bouwmeester and Kyle Brodziak at the blue line before speeding in and snapping a quick shot past Allen.

11/25 vs Montreal: The Canadiens will be looking for a similar performance to their 3-0 shutout of the Rangers in their first matchup. “It (was) a good test for us and (I’m) glad we responded the way we did”.

I just can’t understand why Vigneault played both Stoll and Etem over Moore, one of his most reliable players on the entire roster, against one of the best teams in the National Hockey League in the St. Louis Blues.

“The best period we played all year on the road was the first period and we were down 3-0”, he said.

With under four minutes left in the first period, Kyle Brodziak won a faceoff in the offensive zone, Colton Parayko blistered a shot on net, and with Lundqvist leaving a rare rebound, Jaskin cleaned it up. “I thought we were going to win for sure”. “But we made mistakes”. J.T. Miller put the Rangers on top, 4-2, before Troy Brouwer connected at 14:21 to close the gap to 4-3.

In Chicago, Sergey Kalinin scored a power-play goal with 2:27 left and New Jersey beat Chicago for their second victory over the defending Stanley Cup champions in a week.

“I felt like even though we were up, the game could go either way the way it was played”, Lundqvist said.

“They got the timely save and the timely goal, and we didn’t get the timely save and the timely goal”, Washington coach Barry Trotz said.

But McDonagh put a slap shot through a screen set up by left winger Rick Nash for his second goal of the season to increase the Rangers lead to 5-3 at 2:44 of the third period.

The Rangers have now won seven straight games to improve to 12-2-2 on the season, and they will be back in action on Saturday against the Ottawa Senators. Missing key players for extended amounts of time, including Patrik Berglund, Paul Stastny, and Jaden Schwartz, the club’s GM Doug Armstrong has had to get creative with the roster. D Dylan McIllrath also was a healthy scratch for the Rangers….