VANCOUVER, British Columbia — This should have been an easy one to kick off the Western Canada portion of the Rangers’ road trip. Playing a Vancouver team Wednesday that traded its captain, has started its rebuild, and was starting a rookie goalie making his NHL debut, the Rangers should have gone through the motions, collected two points, and moved on.
But it wasn’t easy at all. The Rangers took control early, but they never could shake the lowly Canucks, until Mika Zibanejad scored his second goal of the game, into an empty net with 1:34 remaining, to seal a 6-4 victory and extend the Rangers’ win streak to six games.
And afterward, the Rangers’ message was simple: Hey, we won. That’s all that matters.
“A win is win,’’ said Artemi Panarin, who followed up the first four-goal game of his career Saturday in Carolina with two more goals, which helped the Rangers take a 3-2 lead in the first period.
“Of course everyone wants to play better, but I don’t know, maybe having four days off, or something [explains it].’’
The Rangers (32-14-8) started the four-game road trip in Carolina Saturday and then came straight to Vancouver, where they were off Sunday and practiced Monday and Tuesday, trying to get their bodies adjusted to the Pacific Time Zone. In the end, it may have been that spending so much time on the road between games dulled their game a little.
“It wasn’t a perfect game,’’ Rangers coach Gerard Gallant said.
“It was a bit of a sloppy game. But we had some really nice goals and made some good plays. And I think we were in control, [and] we felt good about that. But we can be better. And you know, when you come out here and you sit for four days before you play another game, it’s just a little rust. And I don’t think the guys were sharp tonight.’’
Chris Kreider and K’Andre Miller scored the other goals for the Rangers. For Kreider, his goal was the 251st of his career, moving him past Mark Messier into seventh…
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