Filip Chytil stays red-hot as Rangers top Flames in OT thriller

The sprint to the playoffs is on, but the Rangers already got a taste of postseason hockey. 

Between the thrill of a back-and-forth 60 minutes, the shades of old-time hockey in every fight and the intensity with which both teams skated, the Rangers’ 5-4 win in overtime over the Flames on Monday night at the Garden was exactly the kind of game the club needed to set the tone for the home stretch of the regular season. 

The first game back from the All-Star break came down to the wire after the Flames scored two goals in the third period to take their first lead of the contest, but Mika Zibanejad scored his second goal of the game to tie it up for a third time before Alexis Lafreniere scored 1:37 into the extra period to secure the victory. 

“A full-ice two-on-one, looking for Mika and then the rebound came in front and I just tried to shoot on goal,” Lafreniere said with a smile. “I wasn’t really looking where I was shooting, so good it went in.” 

It was a fittingly chaotic game-winning sequence for a wild and crazy game that seemed to have a little bit of everything. Despite both teams coming off a long layoff, there was no shortage of action from start to finish. And with every open-ice hit, every set of gloves that were dropped to the ice and each of the nine goals that were scored, the Garden crowd responded to the electricity that was in the air. 

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When Filip Chytil scored his second goal of the game to give the Rangers a 2-1 lead early in the second period, fans in attendance couldn’t help but chant his name. 

“I always just hear ‘Igor!’” Chytil told The Post after the win. “And now I hear my name. That was cool.” 

It was impossible not to hang on every shift in this game. After Andrew Mangiapane scored while crashing the net to knot the game at three-all early in the third, the Blueshirt faithful yelled just as hard as Rangers goalie Jaroslav Halak did to call out the Flames’ forward for kicking the puck in. 

The play went under review and was ultimately deemed a good goal by the NHL’s situation room in Toronto. 

Just over two minutes later, Calgary defenseman Michael Stone blasted one past Halak off a drop-back pass to put his team up by one. The Rangers were the ones who had to answer this time around, and Zibanejad did by putting away a feed from behind the Flames’ net from Artemi Panarin to make it a 4-4 game and ultimately force overtime, where Lafreniere scored the second OT-winner of his NHL career. 

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The Rangers dialed up the physicality right off the bat, landing a few massive hits and working for possession in the corners and along the boards. Calgary took exception to the clean hits and the players voiced their concerns with their fists. 

After Chytil and Blake Coleman traded goals for their respective teams in the opening frame, Rangers captain Jacob Trouba upended the Flames’ Dillon Dube before Chris Tanev jumped in to stand up for his teammate. The two No. 8’s exchanged a couple of blows until they were separated by the refs. 

Sammy Blais, skating in his first game after a two-week conditioning assignment at AHL Hartford, later checked Milan Lucic to the visitors’ displeasure. Suddenly, gloves were scattered everywhere as everybody joined in on the brouhaha at center ice. 

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The Rangers came away with power plays from both sequences, but they were unable to capitalize with the man-advantage until the tail end of the second period. Trouba landed another thunderous hit and knocked Nazem Kadri’s helmet off, for which the defenseman got back on his skates and prepared himself for retaliation. 

Dube came to Kadri’s defense and in turn was hit with an instigator penalty to put the Rangers back on the power play. Zibanejad whacked home an absurd turnaround, no-look feed from Chris Kreider to give the Rangers a 3-2 lead heading into the second intermission. 

“We have a lot of these types of players, like Troubs, Blazer and a lot more,” Chytil said. “They make great hits, they play physical. The whole team was competing. We were hard on pucks and that’s how we can get two points.”