Chris Kreider took a cross-ice feed from Mika Zibanejad, and buried it past Carolina goalie Pyotr Kochetkov for a goal in the Rangers’ Game 3 win.
— It wasn’t even the game-winning goal by Artemi Panarin, 1:43 into overtime to give the Rangers a 3-2 win over Carolina and a commanding 3-0 series lead Thursday night, that was the star of this show.
The play that encapsulated exactly how special this Rangers team is and how diabolical they’ve been in confounding Carolina in this second-round playoff series, took place in the middle of the second period.
There was Chris Kreider breaking up a play in the Rangers’ defensive zone on a Hurricanes power play, busting up Sebastian Aho and Andrei Svechnikov with one hit and separating them from the puck.
A moment later, Mika Zibanejad was taking the puck across the Carolina blue line and the 33-year-old Kreider, trailing the play after his hit, blew past Hurricanes defenseman Brent Burns.
That’s where Kreider took a work-of-art cross-ice feed from Zibanejad, the puck sliding between Burns and Jake Guentzel, and buried it past Carolina goalie Pyotr Kochetkov to tie a game the Hurricanes had been dominating.
