Fifteen minutes of desultory action begat five minutes of activity in the opening period, with the Rangers striking twice within 64 seconds to hit the first intermission up, 2-0.<\/p>\n
The trio of Mika Zibanejad, Alexis Lafreni\u00e8re, and Artemi Panarin accounted for both goals, with Zibanejad netting the first on a power play at 15:09 while Florida’s Jack Studnicka was serving a delay-of-game minor for sending the puck over the glass.<\/p>\n
Panarin started the play with a quick turn at center ice while the Panthers were on a change. He brought the puck in the left side of the zone and found Lafreni\u00e8re in the corner before the former No. 1 overall pick sent it toward the crease for Zibanejad’s tap-in behind Sergei Bobrovsky.<\/p>\n
New York struck again on its next shot on goal, with Panarin getting credit after a deflection with assists from Zibanejad and Lafreni\u00e8re.<\/p>\n
The Rangers had killed off two early penalties while allowing just two shots, and they finished the period on another power play after defenseman Aaron Ekblad was whistled at 18:52 for an illegal check to the head.<\/p>\n
The Panthers did outshoot New York, 10-6, in the period, forcing Igor Shesterkin to make several quick-reflex saves, particularly early.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fifteen minutes of desultory action begat five minutes of activity in the opening period, with the Rangers striking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388130,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-388129","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}