Playoff Takeaways: Kreider hat trick spurs dramatic comeback, Rangers eliminate Canes

Only three players in the history of the National Hockey League have scored three goals in a New York Rangers sweater in one period of playoff hockey. The first two? Mark Messier in ’94 and Wayne Gretzky in ’97.

The third? Chris Kreider, on Thursday night, to singlehandedly end the Carolina Hurricanes post-season.

After a two-game slide, and a Game 6 that saw them get outplayed for much of the night, the Rangers clawed their way back, closed the door on Round 2, and booked their ticket to the Eastern Conference Final.

Now, they await the winner of the Florida Panthers-Boston Bruins grudge match. But before we get there, here’s a look at the night that sent the Canes home.

ALL CANES EARLY ON, AGAIN

Through 40 minutes of Game 6, it was all coming up Canes. The home side had come out flying to start the tilt, holding the Rangers’ star-studded offence at bay while pouring chance after chance on Igor Shesterkin. Carolina headed into the third with a 3-1 lead, with all the momentum. And the PNC Arena crowd had watched their club play the type of game worthy of a forced Game 7.

They watched Seth Jarvis battle on the penalty kill to nullify a Rangers power play, then score on Carolina’s own ensuing man-advantage. They watched Jordan Martinook come up clutch in his depth minutes, delivering a beautiful feed from behind the Rangers net to set up Martin Necas for a goal in the first, then diving into his own crease to pull a puck off the goal line a period later. They saw Sebastian Aho collect a pair of crucial points, too, the team’s offensive leader providing what was expected of him in the most important game of the season.

The Rangers had gotten one of their own back, and had turned up the heat in the second period, but by the time the club’s headed into the second intermission, it looked like Carolina’s game to lose.

KREIDER COMES UP HISTORIC IN THE THIRD

And then Chris Kreider came alive.

With his Rangers veering towards a Game 7 with all the momentum moving against them, the 33-year-old put his team on his back, and went to work. 

The first goal came six-and-a-half minutes into the third period, Kreider jamming at a puck stuck near the post and stuffing it past Frederik Andersen. 3-2.

The next came 12 minutes into the final frame, with the Rangers gifted a crucial power play late. It had been three games since New York had found a way to get by the Canes’ penalty kill. When it mattered most, though, they found the goal they needed — a Kreider deflection at the netfront. 3-3.

And then, in the final five minutes of the tilt, the former 50-goal-scorer completed the natural hat trick, posting up at the netfront once again and finishing off a pass through the crease from Ryan Lindgren. 4-3.

With the post-season hat trick — the first of Kreider’s career — the winger became just the third player in franchise history to record three goals in a series-clinching game, joining Mike Gartner and Steve Vickers. The trio of tallies also moved Kreider into the lead among Rangers’ goal-scorers in these playoffs. And Kreider’s earned his seven tallies every which way this post-season: four at even strength, two on the power play, one short-handed.

And also, most importantly on this night, one game winner.

“That’s what you need. You need guys like that in the playoffs,” teammate Vincent Trocheck said of Kreider to Sportsnet’s Shawn McKenzie post-game. “It was a pretty emotional game, going down 3-1 and coming back in the third. A lot of big performances tonight. Some guys stepped up big. 

“I think that was a game that we needed that resilience to show, that after losing a couple in a row, we could really stick with it.”

REST OF RANGERS’ GAME-CHANGERS FIND THEIR FORM, TOO

In the grand scheme of things for New York, the bigger question at the core of this late-series slide wasn’t whether the Rangers could find their way past Carolina, it was whether their leaders could get back on track after a string of games that saw the Canes hold them at bay.

Thursday night, under the PNC Arena lights, they proved their worth once again.

Largely held off the scoresheet for the past two games (aside from a lone Mika Zibanejad helper in Game 4), the Rangers’ crew of game-changers were all over the sheet in this one. It was Trocheck who tallied first, set up by Artemi Panarin, to begin chipping away at the Canes’ lead. It was Zibanejad setting up Kreider for the goal that kicked off the club’s series-altering third-period surge. Panarin and Trocheck registered helpers on Kreider’s next one, too, the power play marker that tied the game late.

By the night’s end, Panarin, Trocheck and Kreider each finished with multi-point games, while Zibanejad earned the primary assist on perhaps the most crucial tally of the game. With a tough Round 3 matchup ahead, it might be how Peter Laviolette’s group won this game that winds up even more important than the fact that they did. 

CANES LEFT WITH MUCH TO HAUNT THEM AFTER LATE COLLAPSE

Look at boxscore alone, and this game seems like an open-and-shut case: an early lead from the Canes, a late-games surge from the Rangers, and curtains. But in truth, what might hurt the Canes more than the three late goes allowed were all the chances that fell just an inch away from padding their third-period lead.

There was Martinook ripping a shot off the post early in the third, and Jake Guentzel firing another one off the iron later in the period. There was Aho, breaking in alone on Shesterkin with all the time in the world, unable to beat him with the forehand-backhand. There was Jordan Staal on another strong Canes push ending with him alone in the slot, the puck on his stick — and another stop from Shesterkin.

In four of six games in this series, the winning club finished with four goals on the night — the same was true in this one until the Rangers added a fifth courtesy of an empty netter. Getting that fourth goal by Shesterkin proved to be crucial to keeping Carolina’s season alive. And there’s no doubt they had their chances to get it, and pull away. 

But in the end, they fell just short, while the Rangers found a way.

“There wasn’t a whole lot said after the second [period], to be honest with you,” said Trocheck to McKenzie, of how his club came up with its third-period push. “We knew we didn’t play our best two periods going into the third. It was basically, we need to dig deep, and make a decision: 

“Either you’re going to come out in the third and play your hardest, or you’re going to fold and you’re not going to play.”

UP NEXT: THE EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS

With the Canes bounced, the Rangers now turn their attention to Round 3, where they will face off against either the Bruins or Panthers.

Whichever of the pair they face, it’ll be a fresh challenge for this iteration of the Rangers. New York hasn’t faced Boston in the playoffs since 2013 (a five-game Bruins win), and have met the Panthers in the playoffs only once, in 1997 (a five-game Rangers win).

Thursday’s victory makes the Rangers the sixth Presidents’ Trophy winner to move on to the third round in the past two decades. Only two of those six went on to win the Stanley Cup (Chicago in 2013, Detroit in 2008). Still, look at the past decade of playoff participants, and the Rangers certainly seem to be due for a title run — in that span, only three franchises have gotten this far, this many times (this is the Rangers’ fourth Conference Finals trip in 10 years). The two others both have Cups to their name: Tampa Bay, and Vegas.

Game 6 between the Bruins and Panthers, to potentially decide the Rangers’ next opponent, goes Friday night.