The Rangers activated Patrik Nemeth off injured reserve and reinserted the veteran defenseman into the lineup for his first game in nearly a month against the Senators on Sunday in Ottawa.
Nemeth, who missed the previous seven games due to lingering effects of his December bout with COVID-19, replaced rookie Zac Jones on the Rangers’ third defensive pair next to Braden Schneider. Jones had skated in the previous five games in Nemeth’s absence, dishing one assist and recording four shots on goal.
Registering one shot on goal, two blocked shots and three hits in 15:10 in the win, Nemeth held his own despite being away from game action for so long.
Schneider said this past week that his rotation of defensive partners hasn’t required much of an adjustment, and that was evident on Sunday. The 20-year-old defenseman posted another strong performance in just his 13th NHL game, recording the primary assist on Ryan Strome’s game-tying tally in the first period.
Artemi Panarin’s power-play goal in the second period counted as the Rangers’ 13th man-advantage goal in their last 12 games. The Rangers have now recorded power-play goals in eight of their last 10 games.
The Rangers haven’t seen many power-play opportunities over the last three games, earning the man-advantage just once in the previous two games and twice on Sunday. Still, the Rangers continue to be a consistent threat whenever they are on the power play.
“I just think we have to get a little bit more aggressive going to the net and make people haul you down,” head coach Gerard Gallant said this past week. “We just didn’t do enough of that cycling down low [against the Bruins and the Red Wings] and the one time we did it, [Detroit] got a penalty for tripping. You got to get involved a little bit more going to the net.”
Gallant opted to go with Igor Shesterkin in goal for a sixth straight game Sunday. After Shesterkin shouldered a substantial workload with the last two games going to shootouts, backup Alexandar Georgiev may have been the way to go with the Capitals and Penguins on deck.
Shesterkin turned aside 29 of the 30 shots he faced in the win, the 50th of his NHL career. It’ll be interesting to see if Gallant continues to ride Shesterkin, whose .938 save percentage leads all NHL goalies with at least 30 starts this season.
With Panarin and Adam Fox each recording 40-plus assists, the Rangers have two players with such numbers through 50 games of a season for just the second time in franchise history and the first since Mark Messier and Brian Leetch did it during the 1991-92 season.