The Good: Yet another complete game by the Rangers tonight, alot of good to take away from tonights game. Brad Richards opened the scoring with a power play goal at 11:40 of the first period taking a cross-ice pass at the Florida blueline from Callahan, and Richards who faked a slap shot, got Panther goalie Jose Theodore to move awkwardly to his right and Richards beat Theodore under his armpit for a 1-0 lead. Artem Anisimov made to 2-0 towards the end of the first period on yet another power play goal. Set up by a beautiful cross ice pass from Stralman to Anisimov, as well as a couple Panthers chasing the puck and getting caught out of position, Artie passed the puck over to Christensen who shot it into Theodore's pads but the rebound came right back out to Anisimov for the easy rebound goal at 17:27.
The fun didn't stop in the second period. With Brandon Prust serving the end of his penalty, Derek Stepan took the puck from coast to coast, putting a deke on Panthers rookie defenseman Gudbranson, and beat Theodore high glove as Prust's penalty expired to stretch the Ranger lead to 3-1. The Rangers made it 4-1, set up by Hagelin being able to negate an icing. The puck found its way to John Mitchell in the bottom of the circle who shot the puck into Theodore, but a big juicy rebound came all the way out to Eminger in the high slot who blasted a shot by Theodore high blocker side. The Rangers made it 5-1 following more hard work by the GAS line particularly from Stepan. Stepan raced up ice, took a hit from a Panther defenseman, got right back up with the puck, found Anisimov for a one timer which found its way to Theodore who left a big rebound at the top of the crease between Florida defenseman Kennedy's legs for Marian Gaborik who does not miss from that close. The Rangers closed the scoring just 55 seconds later set up by a pass from Gaborik to Stepan at center ice who passed to Del Zotto at the Florida blueline. He rifled a shot at Theodore, who left another big juicy rebound chance for Stepan between the hashmarks who also doesn't miss from that close to make it 6-1.
Scott Clemmensen relieved Jose Theodore to start the third period.
The Bad: The Rangers lone negative mark against them came at 18:07 of the second period, 40 seconds after Anisimov made it 2-0 Rangers. Erik Gudbranson scored the first goal of his NHL career. After a few seconds of the puck pinballing around in the Rangers zone, the puck found Kris Versteeg along the side boards, who passed the puck back to Gudbranson who blasted the puck by Lundqvist high glove off the crossbar. Not much else went wrong from the Rangers tonight.
The Ugly: Admittedly, I did not watch the third period due to connectivity problems with NHL Gamecenter Live, but it seemed like the Rangers did a good job clogging up the neutral zone and not allowing the Panthers to establish momentum to try and mount a comeback. I'm also running out of good things to say about the Rangers. It was a good and dominating win tonight against a first place team and one of the early surprise teams in the NHL, although one has to wonder how Florida got there with Jose Theodore as their starting goaltender.
I don't remember a time where I've been prouder to call myself a Ranger fan. How could anyone not love this team?
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