Rangers score twice in OT, win once in Game 1 versus Penguins (Video)
The New York Rangers took the first game of their series with the Pittsburgh Penguins 3-2 in OT on Friday night, thanks to goals from Derick Brassard and Benoit Pouliot, who scored six seconds apart in overtime.
Seriously. Twice. When you only need to score one. Watch the scramble for yourself, as Brassard's game-winner appears to go off the crossbar, and before video review confirms it went off the back crossbar -- like, the one inside the net -- Pouliot puts the puck in again:
That's right. Day one of the postseason's second round began on Thursday night with two overtimes, and one overtime goal. That's pretty good. But day two flipped the script: one overtime, two goals, as the Penguins proved what James Bond once told us: you only live twice.
Fitting, really, that Marc-Andre Fleury becomes the first goalie to give up two overtime goals in the same game. That's so Flower.
Also fitting: that the Rangers would score in spite of the officials missing what went on at the goal, especially after the Penguins' game-tying goal came on some blatant goalie interference from Evgeni Malkin.
After a James Neal shot went off Henrik Lundqvist and then shot straight up in the air, Malkin took a whack at it, getting nothing but Lundqvist's glove hand, which probably would have caught the puck otherwise. Instead, it came down behind the Rangers goalie, and somehow, that was okay with the zebras.
That spelled the end of what was once a two-goal lead for New York, and continued the trend of teams blowing two-goal leads in these playoffs. (If only the overtime had kept going. The Rangers scored twice, after all, so the Penguins were all but guaranteed to do the same with a few more minutes.)
Pouliot may have lost his game-winner after video review, but he did get the game's first goal, scoring on a beautiful wrist shot after a solo, end-to-end rush early in the first.
Brad Richards scored New York's second of the night after receiving a pass from Carl Hagelin while he was camped out alone in front. And we do mean all alone. There is nowhere else in New York you can go and find that much wide open space.
But the Penguins came back in the second, erasing the lead with a Lee Stempniak backhander and James Neal's aforementioned tally that probably shouldn't have counted.
Fortunately for New York, the Rangers were able to win in spite of their inability to hold the lead (not to mention the error-prone ways of human officials), as Lundqvist shut the door the rest of the way, allowing a duo of heroes to step up in overtime.
