Rangers Have Successful Road Trip

There is no doubt that when it comes to traveling to Western Canada, not many teams on the east coast look forward to making the road trip, especially when it comes to the New York Rangers as it sometimes a deathtrap for them when it comes to trying to win hockey games.

For starters, the trip is not easy when you have to play teams like the Calgary Flames, Vancouver Canucks, Edmonton Oilers, and the Seattle Kraken. Yes, some of these teams are not playing up to their potential, but they are still clubs in the best hockey league in the world who are competitive every night.

Secondly, as our esteemed host Vic Morren pointed out to me via text message, it is a lot of miles and time zone changes to travel to play hockey. Let us look at the Rangers' successful 3-1 road trip that happened last week and ended on Saturday night.

The Rangers traveled 2,420.7 miles from Westchester County, NY to go to Calgary to take on the Flames. That was a time change from Eastern Standard Times to Mountain Time.

After the Rangers lost 5-1 to the Flames, they went about 605 miles to Vancouver and from Mountain Time to Pacific Time. The Blueshirts won that game 2-0 thanks to great performance from their goaltender Jonathan Quick.

The Blueshirts then traveled 720 miles to take on the Oilers and went from Pacific Time to Mountain Time. The Rangers pulled off a big 4-3 comeback win in overtime thanks to a goal from their captain, J.T. Miller.

The last stop on the team's four game was Seattle as they went from Mountain Time to Pacific Time. The club traveled 790 miles and beat the Kraken in overtime by a score of 3-2 on a goal by Will Cuylle.

In all, the Rangers traveled close to 4,536 miles, made four time zone changes, and won three games. One should call that a mighty successful road trip.

Of course, the Blueshirts did more than just travel tons of miles to pick up six crucial points. There are a few reasons why the team came out of this road trip relatively unscathed.

For starters, the team got excellent goaltending from both Quick and Igor Shesterkin. As mentioned above, Quick shutout the Canucks with a great 23-save performance, as he improved to 2-1 with a 1.35 goals-against average, a .941 save percentage, and one shutout on the season.

While Shesterkin was not sharp in his team's 5-1 loss to the Flames, he was excellent against the Oilers. He stopped 33 of 36 shots and did everything he could to give the Rangers a chance to not only tie the game up, but win it in overtime.

Another reason why the Rangers had a solid road trip is because they showed that they could battle back. This was exactly the case against the Oilers when they were down 3-1 heading into the third period.

Instead of rolling over and taking the loss like they would have last seasoned, the Rangers fought back to score two goals in the third and then win it in overtime. This is something that the team was not able to do last season, which ended up hurting them in the long run.

Lastly, with the exception of the game against the Flames, the Blueshirts played solid defensive hockey. They gave up a total of 10 goals on the trip and showed that they could bear down and block shots, backcheck, and make smart plays in their own end.

All in all, it was a great trip for the Rangers as it put them in a respectable place in the standings. As of this writing (Monday, Monday, November 3), the team is fifth in the Metropolitan Division, eighth in the Eastern Conference, and 16th in the league with a 6-5-0-2 record for 14 points.

It will be up to the Blueshirts to use the momentum gained from this road trip and turn it into their first home victory when they take on the Carolina Hurricanes tomorrow night at Madison Square Garden.