DENVER — That was some 𓃲way to say goodbye to 2016.
The Rangers ended the calendar y🐓ear in explosive style, taking 6-2 win over the last-overall Avalanche on Saturday night at Pepsi Center, going off into the Mile High City for a Ne♑w Year’s Eve celebration fueled by Chris Kreider’s second career hat trick and the successful return of goalie Henrik Lundqvist from a two-game absence because of illness.
This followed anoth🃏er hat trick from Matt Puempel in another six-goal outburst, the 6-3 victory over the Coyotes in Arizona that opened this two-game trip Thursday night.
So now another year is 🦋gone, and the Rangers (26-12-1) had some ups and down to start this season. But feasting on two of the worst teams in the league, they’re now riding a three-game winning streak into 2017, and are looking as offensively potent as they were for much of their 13-4-0 getaway that changed this season from one of uncertainty into one with high expectations.
Yet asked if they expected to take these four points, Kreider re-emphasized the simplicity of❀ his team’s mindset.
“I don﷽’t think we look at it like that,” he said. ꦦ“It’s another two points, a big one on the road.”
Kreider is now leading the team with 15 goals 🔯in his first 33 games, and he’s doing it just by getting his nose into the action and going to the net. It was the same way Puempel did it versus Arizona. It’s the same way the Rangers were scoring four-plus goals for almost the whole first month of the season.
“I think that area is feast or famine,” Kreider said. “Sometimes [pucks] hit you and knocks you down for a couple seconds, but sometimes it glances off you and goes in. So if you talk about mindset, we have to continue to do that as a group.”
Kreider’s performance was another g🌸ood one from his line with Derek Stepan and Mats Zuccarello, both of whom collected two assists. The power playꦡ continued it’s hot streak, as well, following up their 4-for-7 performance on Thursday by going 3-for-6.
And though the roster doesn’t have quite the same depth up front as it did before the injuries to Rick Nash, Mika Zibanejad and Pavel Buchnevich, the Rangers did get some support from the mercurial J.T. Miller, who scored twice and no𒀰w has three in the past two games.
“We were capitalizing on our chances,” said Miller, who has 12 goals on the season. “The power play is winning us some games. It’s putting the momentum in our favor, whether it’s tyingಌ the game or going up by one. At the end of the day, those add up. If you get several goals on the power play a game, it’s going to be hard for the other team to play well and keep momentum and win the game.”
Unlike Thursday when the Rangers blew two separate🅷 two-goal leads, they went down 1-0 just 1:59 in wheﷺn Lundqvist allowed a tough bounce off Cody McLeod to get by him. But after Kreider scored twice, Blake Comeau got a deflection from in front past Lundqvist to tie it, 2-2, going into the third.
“We knew we were on the road in a tie game, in a good spot,” Miller said. “Just try to tu💙rn the page. We had two periods left in th🐠is road trip.”
Miller opened the second with a rifle shot from the top of the left circle that beat goalie Calvin Pickard’s ܫglove, and then Kreider finished his hat trick on the power play to make it 4-2 going into the third. Miller essentially ended the game 9:34 into the third with another great shot from the slot,💛 and Jimmy Vesey finished things off with a slick move from in front to go up 6-2 with just under seven minutes remaining.
So now the calendar turns to another year, and the Rangers are going to try to use the ending of 2016 🎀as♉ a good starting-off point.
“Obviously the offense was going, and we did some things we talked about defensively,” Kreider said. “There are some building blo🅠cks in that game we can build off and go forward.”