COLUMBUS, Ohio — A powerful third interval from the Rangers on Saturday night time wouldn’t have mattered if not for Will Cuylle.
For if not for Cuylle’s two-point effort over the ultimate 20 minutes of regulation, a vital 4-3 win over the Blue Jackets at Nationwide Enviornment wouldn’t have been potential.
In a Metropolitan Division matchup the Rangers needed to seize for themselves, with Columbus sitting two spots forward within the Jap Convention wild-card race, Cuylle, who scored the game-winning objective, was a bull and the puck could as effectively have been crimson.
“It’s obviously a long season, there’s ups and downs, but I always try to go into the game with the same mindset,” the 23-year-old instructed The Publish after the win, which moved the Rangers to inside three factors of the second wild card. “Just play my game and see what happens. I’m not trying to really think too much if I had a goal last game or if I haven’t scored in five or six games, it is what it is. I just try to go into every game like it’s a new game.”
Head coach Peter Laviolette deployed Cuylle on the second line Saturday night time as a part of a slew of lineup modifications, but it surely’s a spot the second-year Ranger had discovered himself in — on one wing or the opposite — 18 instances this season.
To not point out that he’s skated on the highest unit on 4 events by way of 55 video games, as effectively.
Between the uptick in ice time with a number of top-six assignments and becoming a member of the penalty-kill rotation, Cuylle has gotten an actual style of an expanded NHL function.
This after experiencing his first full season in 2023-24, when he burst onto the Rangers scene after a four-game cameo in 2022-23.
“I think it’s really good [for his development],” Laviolette stated of the elevated function Cuylle has seen this season. “He’s stepping up like that inside of a game that we need to win after a game like [Friday night against the Penguins], I thought it was real important.”
Combating off Cole Sillinger whereas nonetheless sustaining possession as a delayed penalty was known as, Cuylle flung the puck by way of site visitors earlier than Urho Vaakanainen obtained a stick on it to knot the sport at three-all lower than two minutes into the third interval.
Cuylle then pounced on a free puck off a Columbus clearing try that was disrupted by Vincent Trocheck.
Snapping it in below the blocker of Blue Jackets goalie Elvis Merzlikins, Cuylle elevated his objective whole to 14 on the season to offer him 29 factors in 55 video games.
“He’s a guy that he’s always doing something,” Braden Schneider stated. “Whether it’s throwing a big hit, getting pucks out and then he can score goals. … He was determined, he was a beast.”
Saturday night time counted because the Rangers’ seventh straight sport trailing coming into the third interval.
Their points defending the push proceed to hang-out them, as a pair scary sequences put them in that precarious place.
After Kent Johnson tied it up 1-1 off a pointy angle within the first interval, Justin Danforth obtained to the online first because the Rangers’ leisurely back-check — significantly from Alexis Lafreniere — allowed for former Ranger Jack Johnson to feed the Blue Jackets wing in entrance for the 2-1 rating.
A laser shot from Mika Zibanejad could have tied the sport at 2-2 for the Rangers on the 6:38 mark of the second interval, however Columbus ahead James van Riemsdyk scored on an primarily empty internet after a tic-tac-toe passing sequence in transition gave the Blue Jackets a 3-2 lead later within the center body.
“We knew we had to at least get one goal to try to get to overtime, we were just trying to get lots of pucks to the net,” Cuylle stated of the third. “I feel like we kind of outplayed them most of the period. That was just the game plan, that desperation.”
