Blueshirts Keep It Going
The Rangers were coming off an emotional 4-1 victory over the Devils on Thursday night. The visiting Thrashers were down to their fourth string goaltender (fifth if you count the unplanned retirement of Pasi Nurminen in the Summer), and had given up seven power play goals in a 9-1 loss to Toronto the previous night. The question going into the game was could coach Tom Renney keep the Rangers focused for this important match-up, against a team that has had a lot of success at MSG in recent years…the answer was an emphatic “YES!”.
It may not have been as dominating as the victory over the New Jersey Devils in terms of the flow of play, but for the second straight game the Rangers dominated on the scoreboard. Once again they got scoring from multiple lines, and extended their streak of scoring first in the game to six games. Rookie goaltender Henrik Lundqvist captured the hearts and minds of the MSG faithful, warranting multiple standing ovations and several chants of “Henrik” and “Lundqvist” during the game. In a move seldom seen in hockey, the young netminder at one point acknowledged the crowd, which only served to further raise the volume of the chants. The cheers continued into the post-game as the majority of the crowd stayed to watch Lundqvist awarded the first star of the game.