Mika Zibanejad had a goal and an assist as the New York Rangers held off a furious rally by the Carolina Hurricanes to take Game 1 by the score of 4-3.
Zibanejad opened the scoring in the first period, but Jaccob Slavin responded less than two minutes later to tie the game.
In a penalty-filled first period, it was the Rangers who took advantage of their opportunities on the man advantage, scoring twice against the Hurricanes, who had the second-best penalty-kill unit during the regular season.
Zibanejad scored his second goal of the game on the power play off a beautiful feed from Chris Kreider. The Blueshirts scored another power-play goal later in the first, with Zibanejad and Kreider assisting on the Vincent Trochek score.
Zibanejad recorded his fourth straight multi-point playoff game and became the fourth player in Rangers history to do so, joining Adam Fox (4 GP in 2022), Pierre Larouche (4 GP in 1986), and Don Maloney (4 GP in 1979).
After a crisply played but scoreless second period, Martin Necas started the scoring in the third period to bring the Hurricanes to with one.
However, Artemi Panarin took a pass from Alexei Lafraniere and rifled a shot past Hurricanes goaltender Frederik Andersen to give the Rangers a two-goal lead.
Andersen made 19 saves on the night, while Igor Shesterkin made 22 saves for the Blueshirts.
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The Hurricanes pulled within one with 1:45 left in the third period when Seth Jarvis jammed a shot past Shesterkin with Andersen pulled for an extra skater.
With 40 seconds left in the game, Trocheck took a delay of game penalty to give the Hurricanes a two-man advantage after they pulled Anderson from the net. However, on the ensuing faceoff, Andre Svechnikov took a tripping penalty to negate the advantage, and the Rangers were able to hold on for the victory.
Many Rangers-Hurricanes Connections
Peter Laviolette and Rod Brind’Amour won a Stanley Cup with the 2006 Hurricanes as head coach and team captain, respectively. This will mark the fourth series in NHL history to feature head coaches where one had previously captained a Cup winner with the other as head coach. The only other such matchups involved Dick Irvin and Hap Day, who won a Cup together with Toronto in 1932 (Irvin as coach, Day as captain) and then clashed while at the helm of the Canadiens and Maple Leafs, respectively, in three other playoff series.
Rangers forward Vincent Trocheck played parts of three seasons for the Hurricanes, while Rangers defenseman Adam Fox was acquired by the Rangers from Carolina on Apr. 30, 2019.
Tony DeAngelo, Brady Skjei, Jesper Fast, and Brendan Lemieux all played multiple seasons for the Rangers before joining the Hurricanes.
The two teams will meet again on Tuesday, May 7, at Madison Square Garden.