The New York Rangers reached the National Hockey League playoffs for the sixth time in seven seasons with a 4-2 home win against the New Jersey Devils in a game that started with a brawl and left blood on the ice.
Brandon Dubinsky, Dan Girardi, Mats Zuccarello and Derek Stepan scored for New York at Madison Square Garden last night as the Rangers became the first team from the Eastern Conference to book a postseason place.
The victory followed back-to-back defeats for the Rangers (45-20-7, 97 points), who had lost five of their seven prior games. The Rangers have 10 regular-season games remaining, one more than the Pittsburgh Penguins, who are three points behind New York in second place in the Atlantic Division.
In the conference standings, where the top three places are held by division leaders regardless of their points total, the Rangers lead the race for the top seed by 10 points over the Boston Bruins (42-27-3, 87 points), who routed the Toronto Maple Leafs 8-0 last night.
The only other team to reach the playoffs so far is the St. Louis Blues, who lead the Western Conference with 100 points.
The Devils (41-27-5, 87 points) are in sixth place in the Eastern Conference.
Three seconds after the opening face-off, six players started fighting, with the Devils’ Ryan Carter bleeding after being taken to the ice by the Rangers’ Stu Bickel. Officials assessed a total of 40 minutes in penalties for the brawl, including a 10-minute misconduct call against the Devils’ Bryce Salvador for trying to pull Bickel off Carter.
Dubinsky put the Rangers ahead after 1 minute, 11 seconds.
In the second period, Girardi made it 2-0 and Patrik Elias got a goal for the Devils before Zuccarello scored on a power play to restore New York’s two-goal lead. Petr Sykora cut the deficit again before Stepan sealed the win with his 16th goal of the season 70 seconds from the end of the game.
To contact the reporter on this story: Dex McLuskey in Dallas at dmcluskey@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Sillup at msillup@bloomberg.net.
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