Rangers Take Step In Right Direction With Win Over Sabres

The New York Rangers got a critical 3-2 win over the Buffalo Sabres on Wednesday night.

Going into this matchup, the Rangers were coming off of two consecutive losses and were in dire need of a victory.

Mika Zibanejad opened up the scoring in the first period on the power play to put the Rangers up 1-0, marking his overall impressive night.

Zibanejad just played with a lot more confidence offensively, something we haven't seen from the veteran forward for large parts of the season.

There were no goals recorded until the end of the third period when Reilly Smith, who’s starting to find his game recently, found the back of the net.

It was the play of Igor Shesterkin that helped the Rangers hold the lead for the entirety of the contest and escape Buffalo with a win. Shesterkin ended the night with 29 saves on 31 shots.

After going scoreless for 27 games, Adam Fox finally tallied an empty-net goal to close out New York’s victory. Although it was just an empty-net goal, seeing the puck go in the net was a relief for Fox.

“A little bit. It's obviously a relief, anyone wants to get in the goal column. It's not something I judge my play off of,” Fox said via Mollie Walker of The New York Post. “I'm trying to still contribute and like we've been saying, trying to defend hard and focus on that first.

“Not trying to cheat to get that first one. I'm plenty happy seeing forwards score and give it to them, but anyone wants to contribute and get goals, too. Definitely a little bit of a sense of relief.”

Unfortunately, there was some bad news that came out of this game for the Rangers. K’Andre Miller did not play at all in the third period with the team announcing he suffered an upper-body injury.

It may not have been the prettiest performance for the Rangers, but a win is a win.

“That’s what we talked about before the game, just one, one win,” Zibanejad said via Walker. “That’s all we care about. Obviously, you want to be able to stand here with an unbelievable effort for 60 minutes and have only positive stuff [to say], but I’ll take the win. We’ll take the win, and keep building."

The Rangers will be back in action on Saturday afternoon against the Los Angeles Kings.