NEW YORK \u2014 The National Hockey League is officially back after the long Olympic break.<\/p>\n
And so are the exact same New York Rangers.<\/p>\n
After getting out to a two-goal lead in their first game back after a 21-day layoff, they eventually allowed three unanswered goals, including Matvei Michkov\u2019s second of the night, the game-winner at the 2:10 mark of overtime, to lose 3-2 at Madison Square Garden on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
The \u201cretooling\u201d Original Six franchise remains firmly in the Eastern Conference cellar \u2014 seven points behind the nearly equally woeful Devils for last place \u2014 and will likely only continue to freefall with the March 6 trade deadline looming, as just about everything that isn\u2019t nailed down sans goaltender Igor Shesterkin may be up for grabs to the highest bidder.<\/p>\n
Head coach Mike Sullivan, fresh off of leading Team USA to their first gold medal in men\u2019s ice hockey in 46 years, is now faced with the reality of once again leading an NHL team that finds itself at the very opposite end of the spectrum, particularly after dealing superstar forward Artemi Panarin to Los Angeles just prior to the break.<\/p>\n
One last reminder of the triumph in Milan came in the form of a pre-game ceremony that honored Sullivan, assistant coach David Quinn, assistant GM Chris Drury and forwards J.T. Miller and Vincent Trocheck.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know, you just kind of get back into game mode,\u201d Sullivan told reporters postgame.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, the celebration before the game is a special moment for a lot of us, and certainly proud of the accomplishment that the Olympic team was able to win the gold medal.\u00a0 We\u2019re particularly proud of J.T. and \u2018Troch\u2019 and the contribution that they had in helping us win over there, those guys were instrumental in so many ways.\u00a0 So, that\u2019s a proud moment for us. But, once the puck drops, you\u2019re right back into game mode.\u201d<\/p>\n
For a while, that went well. Sam Carrick scored a fluky first goal that somehow beat embattled Flyers netminder Samuel Ersson at the 9:56 mark of the opening frame, and Alexis Lafreniere followed that in the second on a goal off a nifty feed from Will Cuylle to give the Rangers a 2-0 advantage.<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t last.\u00a0 Michkov\u2019s two goals were sandwiched around one from Trevor Zegras early in the third period that tied the game, and combined to send a mostly muted crowd home disappointed. However, it wasn\u2019t all bad news on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
Shesterkin and Norris Trophy-winning defenseman Adam Fox both returned after missing some time with injuries and played well; Shesterkin made 21 saves in the overtime loss, while Fox played a team-high 24:57 in his first game in nearly two months.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt pretty good,\u201d Fox told reporters who were able to stick around long enough after the nationally televised 8 PM puck drop.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, you miss enough time with the break and everything, and everyone\u2019s trying to shake off some rust, me included. But, trying to get all that timing and everything down, overall felt pretty good.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 The National Hockey League is officially back after the long Olympic break. And so are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":476244,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5114],"tags":[191,5,4,43,5366,190,109,5222],"class_list":{"0":"post-476243","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-washington-capitals","8":"tag-capitals","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-top-stories-trt","13":"tag-washington","14":"tag-washington-capitals","15":"tag-washingtoncapitals"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116145806770248193","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/476244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}