The New York Rangers‘ Will Cuylle had last looked up at the shot totals in the third period. At the time, he recalled, he saw only eight or nine on the Seattle Kraken’s side.
Seattle would finish Saturday night’s contest with 13, less than half of what the New York Rangers generated in a 3-2 overtime win to cap off their annual Pacific Northwest road trip. In the end, though, Cuylle had the one shot that mattered most in the entire game.
“If you can limit a team’s chances like that, I think you’re going to give yourself a pretty good chance to win every game,” said Cuylle, who won the game with his first career overtime winning goal.
The victory brought an inspiring end to the Rangers’ road trip — one which started with the lowest of lows in the young season.
The trip began a week ago with an embarrassing 5-1 loss to the Calgary Flames, the NHL’s worst team, as the Rangers slipped to the bottom of the Eastern Conference. As they touched down in Vancouver for Tuesday’s contest against the Canucks — and J.T. Miller’s long-anticipated return to his former stomping grounds — the Rangers had won just one of their last seven games. Their stout defensive habits that had kept them in the battle of a series of tight home shutout losses to open the season had given way to last year’s defensive chaos.
The Rangers bent, but did not break. They held Vancouver to just seven high-danger chances and, despite a third-period Canucks push, rode Jonathan Quick’s 23-save shutout to a 2-0 win. They followed that up with an impressive 4-3 comeback win in Edmonton on Thursday, capped off by an overtime winner from Miller. It was the club’s first multi-goal third-period comeback since Feb. 18, 2024.
Enter a Saturday night matchup in Seattle against some familiar faces — former Rangers defenseman Ryan Lindgren and former top prospect Kaapo Kakko, making his season debut.
New York had more shot attempts than Seattle in all three periods, according to Natural Stat Trick, and finished with 57.1% of the game’s share. They limited the Kraken to just one high-danger chance while putting up six. They had 67.4% of the expected goal share, again leading in all three regulation periods.
“I thought tonight might have been our best,” Rangers head coach Mike Sullivan said after Saturday’s win. “Just as far as controlling territory, defending hard, limiting shot quantity and quality. I thought it was a complete effort by everybody.”
The Rangers’ 13 shots allowed Saturday were their fewest since Feb. 27, 2012, against the New Jersey Devils. It was the ninth time since the NHL started tracking shots in 1959-60 that the Blueshirts had allowed 13 or fewer shots in a game.
“You’re not going to lose games if the other team can’t score that much,” Cuylle said.
Cuylle’s winner was preceded by Vladislav Gavrikov’s first goal as a Ranger and Noah Laba’s second career goal — he scored his first NHL goal in Calgary during the first game of the road trip.
It sounds simple, but the Rangers maintained after Saturday’s win that their recent surge is a product of getting back to their game. Cuylle said he’d been feeling under the weather recently, and that having more energy helped him. He now has points in four straight games after starting the season with just one goal in his first nine games.
Will Borgen, playing in his first game in Seattle since the December 2024 trade that brought him to New York in exchange for Kakko, praised the way the Rangers have built up their defensive game over the road trip.
“We got back to those first couple home games when we weren’t scoring but playing great D,” Borgen said. “I think we just got back to that game.”
In Saturday’s effort, he added, New York’s forwards tracked well. Overall, the Rangers were well-positioned throughout.
“That’s the goal every night,” Borgen said. “To limit teams’ chances.”
The Rangers are back on home ice, and in the Eastern time zone, Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden, where they’ll welcome the Carolina Hurricanes.
