K’Andre Miller scored his first goal of the season in overtime lifting the New York Rangers over the Vancouver Canucks 4-3 on Saturday night.
Miller took a pass from Chris Kreider and buried it behind Canucks’ goaltender Casey DeSmith at 3:48 of the extra period, giving the Rangers (6-2-0) their fourth win in a row.
“It’s always good to get the first one out of the way,” Miller said. “I thought we had great team effort from start to finish.”
Carson Soucy had tied the game for Vancouver with a blast from the blue line at 15:42 of the third period.
J.T. Miller, on the power play, and defenseman Tyler Myers, short-handed, scored goals for the Canucks (5-2-1), who had won three in a row but were playing back-to-back nights. Filip Hronek had two assists.
“On a back-to-back usually we come out flat,” Canucks captain Quinn Hughes said. “When we get tired in the second or third, mistakes kick in. There was none of that.
“For us, if we’re going to play like that in a lot of back-to-backs, or games in general, we’re going to be in a pretty good spot toward the end of the year.”
The Rangers scored three power-play goals, two of them in a wild third period.
Mika Zibanejad and Adam Fox scored 1:03 apart in the period. Fox’s goal came with the Rangers on a two-man advantage.
“I don’t think we got up to the level of play that we want to, but that’s going to happen,” said Zibanejad, who scored his first goal of the season and collected two assists. “I’d rather talk about a game that we didn’t play our best and still got the two points than the other way around.”
Artemi Panarin scored the other Rangers goal on a first-period power play. Rangers goalie Igor Shesterkin made 30 saves while DeSmith finished with 20 stops.
Myers did it all himself on his short-handed goal at 9:06 of the third. He intercepted a pass at his blue line, skated up the ice, went in on net with a two-on-one with Sam Lafferty, and scored.
“I thought we played a really solid game as a group,” said Myers. “I didn’t think we gave them much.”
Vancouver tied the game 1-1 on J.T. Miller’s second-period power-play goal after the Rangers were called for too many men on the ice. It was Vancouver’s first power-play goal in 12 opportunities.
New York led 1-0 after the first period.
The Rangers took advantage when the Canucks got into penalty trouble midway through the period, giving New York a two-man advantage for 1:05. With the Rangers pressing, Vincent Trocheck had a good chance that DeSmith stopped, and Zibanejad rang a shot off the post before Panarin scored with a shot through traffic at 9:18.
