New York. “Micah and Kryder should get ahead and start producing,” New York hockey fans shouted after the lone weak goal in last week’s Rally.
Well, the two superstars repeated – and both scored one goal when Rangers on Sunday cut their playoff streak against Carolina with a 3-1 victory.
– Humps? It always is, but it’s just plain fun. It’s not about something I don’t want to do. “I always want to score goals,” Mika tells Sportbladet.
They’ve been injecting goals all season, so the focus has been mainly on Chris Kreider and Mika Zibanjad When the opening rounds goal dried up against the Carolina Hurricanes at any cost it would be broken in Sunday’s must-win game over Madison Square Garden.
And as I said:
They have fulfilled the requirements.
Mika whipped a distinctive smoky whip off the powerplay’s left technical circuit mid-second and whipped a Crider puck into the grille roof at the start of the second, with the help of his Swedish Radar partner – so the Rangers finally managed to win another tight streak with 3-1.
Yes, I think we played a good match. It was very tight again, but we still managed to create more and managed the best chances,” Mika said when we got to him after that.
Of course it feels good, we needed to win this match. But now you just have to forget about it and try to take the next step.
The pressure that he and his good friend Kreider are under at times like these makes Mika no big deal.
There is always pressure, but it’s just fun. It’s not about something I don’t like to do or have done before. He says I always want to score goals.
Hurricanes had their chances, too. Yes, they even won with shooting stats 44-32, but Igor Sjestiorkin was again the ghost in the box and stopped all but one of the shots.
Totally unpredictable, it caused some frustration among the guests and was expressed in a bunch of slips, slips and pacifiers in the last seconds.
Rangers coach Gerard Gallant did not like that. Television images show how he clearly shouted “Shut up the shit” to controversial Carolina defender Tony D’Angelo from the booth.
– I didn’t like all the nonsense, after all, no. We didn’t deal with that kind of thing when we lost, but if that’s what they want to do, we definitely have players that they can take care of, which is them then.
The next game in the series – which is now 2-1 against Carolina – will be played in New York on Wednesday night.