*Photo from the New York Post*
This tilt at Madison Square Garden can be described as pure chaos on the hockey rink. Everything went back and forth, up and down, even in the last second of play. Jacob Trouba scored, Ryan Lindgren scored with less than a second to play, and the New York Rangers stunned the Buffalo Sabres with a 5-4 win on Sunday night.
With his goal in the last second of play, Lindgren becomes the 24th player and 4th defenseman in NHL history to score a go ahead goal in the final second of play in the 3rd period. He's also the 4th player in Rangers history to do so, with the most recent being Brad Richards, who did it in December of 2011. The others are Dean Prentice, who did it in 1960, and Grant Warwick, doing it in 1945.
Lindgren said of his goal that "Me and Foxy are standing up kind of back towards the point and look up and see the clock and kind of realize with five seconds left there's probably not going to be enough time for them to bring it all the way down, so you just keep sneaking in. The puck got to Foxy, who kicked it out to Mika. Obviously, a great play by him. Just a great win."
The Sabres jumped out to the lead first, taking a 1-0 lead when Rasmus Asplund scored his 5th goal of the season 15:53 into the game, assisted by Kyle Okposo and Zemgus Girgensons on the power play. The Rangers had an answer for that, with Chris Kreider scoring his 13th goal of the season with 23 seconds left in the period, also on the power play.
The second period started with Vinnie Hinostroza scoring 2:26 in, giving the Sabres a 2-1 lead on an unassisted goal. Trouba then scored 8:03 into the period on a netfront scramble, tying the game 2-2. Kaapo Kakko then scored on a pass from Ryan Strome 12:07 into the second, giving the Rangers a 3-2 lead. Tage Thompson provided the Sabres answer 50 seconds later to tie it 3-3. 15 seconds after the tying goal, Rasmus Dahlin put the Sabres ahead 4-3. 17 seconds after that, K'Andre Miller tied it 4-4 when he scored from the blue line for his second goal of the season.
It was tied 4-4 all 3rd period long, and it looked like we were heading to overtime, as the puck was stuck along the boards in the dying seconds of the period. All of a sudden, it kicked free, and went to the stick of Mika Zibanejad, who slid it across to an uncovered Lindgren, who scored his second goal of the season with 0.7 seconds left in regulation to deliver the shocking win.
Trouba talked about the goal scoring approach, saying that "We talked about getting more pucks to the net from the blue line. At the end of the day, you've got to get pucks there and that's kind of how they all end up going in. You've got to get bodies there and get traffic."
Alexandar Georgiev got the start for the Rangers, and he did not have his best stuff. He allowed 4 goals on 18 shots in the first two periods of the game, before he was pulled in favor of Igor Shesterkin. He saved all 4 shots he faced in the 3rd period, being credited with the win, bumping his record up to 9-3-2 in 13 starts this season.
In the first half of a back to back, Aaron Dell got the start for the Sabres, facing a heavy volume of shots. Dell saved 31 out of the 36 shots he did face, posting a .861 save percentage in the losing effort. With the loss, Dell's record drops to 0-2-0 in two starts this season.
Sabres head coach Don Granato said "We definitely tightened up in the third period, squeezed our stick a little more. But I didn't feel we were bad. Again, I guess the word I keep using is hesitation. We need to be assertive. When we struggled in the third, we hesitated, maybe took a step back. These situations that's happened to us in the last few days, when you're not getting what you want, you tend to be more hesitant, and we can't have that happen."
The Sabres wrap up the back to back in a matchup against the Columbus Blue Jackets Monday night, with Dustin Tokarski likely to start the second half of the back to back. The Rangers square off against the New York Islanders on Wednesday night, with Shesterkin back in goal to start.
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