Rangers Second Period Surges Helping Reclaim Their Scoring Identity

In their most recent run of play, the New York Rangers second period surges are helping them through almost every obstacle. The offence over the last five games has taken a while to get going. With a record of 4-1-0 in their last five games, New York has tallied 23 goals against quality opponents in this stretch of games. 10 of those 23 have come in the middle frames, an early crutch with Peter Laviolette‘s team early in his inaugural season.

The months of October and November provided the complete opposite to now. It was nothing but fast starts for the Rangers, with the second period being the time when opponents would predict what was coming from New York. Now, it is a “feeling out process” for the first 20 minutes. Then, with the flip of the switch, the lines become quicker, defencemen begin to pinch, and it is all uphill from there. No other second period was more evident than in their 4-3 shootout win against the Florida Panthers last Saturday. It was your typical “tennis match” of a hockey game, just back-and-forth action from both sides. It was the second period that rejuvenated the Rangers that helped propel them to an eventual victory. Let’s take a closer look at that memorable middle frame.

Rangers Second Period Success versus Florida

Leading up to the highly touted contest, both teams were dealing with their fair share of injuries. Florida was without two of the starting defencemen Aaron Ekblad and Gustav Forsling. Their captain Aleksander Barkov was also dealing with a day-to-day injury. Coincidently, New York was also without two of their defensive weapons in their captain Jacob Trouba and Ryan Lindgren. Injury bug aside, these are still two of the best organizations in all of hockey duking it out at The World’s Most Famous Arena in primetime.

Florida got the scoring started thanks to a gnarly deflection from Matthew Tkachuk that seemed to teleport past Igor Shesterkin. An early goal in the second period courtesy of Eetu Luostarinen saw Florida up 2-0 in the blink of an eye. Eventually, the Ranger powerplay found itself on the ice and a wrister from Adam Fox got the scoring started. (You see what happens when he stays out of the Sin Bin?)