Rangers coach David Quinn has been lamenting almost all season long that he has to figure out a way to get more ice time for 19-year-old rookie Filip Chytil. But as the games kept coming and Chytil kept struggling to get results offensively, Quinn believed he had no choice but to give Chytil less ice time, burying him on the fourth line and chaining him to the bench late in games.
When the Rangers found out Monday that Pavel Buchnevich would miss 4-6 weeks with a broken thumb, that seemed to open the possibility for Quinn to give some of Buchnevich's ice time to Chytil, but the coach was reluctant to play Chytil, a center, on the wing.
"I don't really want to do it,'' Quinn said before the Rangers hosted the Vancouver Canucks at the Garden. "I would like more minutes, but, just, right now, it's been hard to do.''
But after Chytil scored his first goal of the season Monday night, on a power play late in the second period to tie the score, Quinn went ahead and put Chytil on the left wing of the top line with Mika Zibanejad and Vlad Namestnikov. The move seemed to give the Rangers tremendous energy in the third period and they ended up riding that wave, getting a tiebreaking goal by 20-year-old rookie Brett Howden that delivered a 2-1 victory, their sixth in the last seven games (6-0-1).
Howden's goal at 11:19 of the third period came after he got kicked out of the right wing faceoff circle and Jesper Fast took his place. Fast won the faceoff, Howden got into the circle and played the puck back to Jimmy Vesey, whose shot was blocked. But Howden picked up the loose puck and fired it past Canucks goalie Jacob Markstrom for his fourth goal of the season, lifting the Rangers (9-7-2).
With Mats Zuccarello (groin) still unable to play, Ryan Spooner slotted into Buchnevich's spot on the top line with Namestnikov and Zibanejad at the start of the game. Chytil remained on the fourth line.
But Quinn thought he could get Chytil some extra ice time by playing him some on the power play, and he sent him out on the Rangers' third power play, in the second period. Chytil quickly took an interference penalty, which ended the power play early.
But Quinn gave him another chance on the Rangers' fourth power play, and his faith in the youngster was rewarded when Chytil banged in the rebound of a shot by Neal Pionk at 12:42 of the period. After that goal, Quinn rewarded Chytil by putting him in Spooner's spot on the first line for the rest of the game.
Nikolay Goldobin scored the game's first goal, at 3:16 of the second period when he stepped out of the penalty box, took the puck away from Pionk, and fired a shot on a two-on-one break past Henrik Lundqvist for his second goal of the season. Little more than a minute later, former Ranger Michael Del Zotto beat Lundqvist for what appeared to be a 2-0 goal, but the goal was overturned on replay, as it became clear the puck hit one post, then hit the crossbar, then hit the second post and bounced out. Later in the period, Goldobin hit the crossbar again, but the puck bounced out, keeping the Rangers within a goal.
