Friday Morning Bathroom Break (3-26-21)
This Day in Music (3-26-1944)
The unquestioned Queen of Motown, Diana Ross, is born in Detroit.
Rangers center Mika Zibanejad did the unthinkable last night as he, in his second straight game against the Philadelphia Flyers, scored a natural hat-trick and added three assists as the Rangers went on to dominate Philly, 8-3. Zibanejad’s six points was not to be out-done by defenseman Adam Fox grabbing five of his own, as the sophomore blue-liner continues to elevate his status as one of the game’s best. There’s something happening here and the Flyers don’t know what it is, as they continue to find themselves bludgeoned by the Rangers in what seems to be every meeting these days. Thursday’s most recent blood-bath saw the Blueshirts draw even with Philly in the standings at 34 points, with the Rangers now looking three points up the skirt of the Boston Bruins. At just the start of March, with Artemi Panarin still in political exile and injuries starting to ravage the team, a run to the Stanley Cup playoffs felt all but over for the Rangers. Since Panarin’s return, the Rangers have looked like a palpably different team. It should be no surprise, regaining one of the world’s best players will do that to a team, but his absence provided a platform for Chris Kreider to seize control of the team, and his confidence hasn’t missed a beat since. Zibanejad is starting to find his form with an efficiency that should utterly horrify the seven other clubs in the Eastern Division. Mika is attacking the net like a prey-driven beast and executing like some of the CIA’s most-lethal members of the kill-squad. Though the Rangers still have a mountain to climb in order to crash the playoff party, time is indeed on their side. Not only do the Rangers have games to play and points to earn, but they enter those contests, by and large, as the younger, fresher, hungrier team. This roster simply has not had to go through the playoff wars that Pittsburgh, Boston, Washington and the Islanders have over the past 3-5 seasons. What the Rangers lack in experience, they certainly can make up for in energy and hare-brained belief.
An opening for the Rangers may have been created by their crosstown rivals, as the Islanders held off the Bruins in Boston 4-3 in overtime to maintain the Isles’ lead on the Eastern Division. In what’s becoming 2021 Islanders vintage, the team fell behind in the first before clamping down and clawing back first with a second period goal by Jean-Gabriel Pageau, before third period goals by Josh Bailey and (guess who) Oliver Wahlstrom, gave the Islanders a late 3-2 lead. While it seems that every time the Islanders need a hero, Wahlstrom is there, his heroics were short-lived. Less than a minute after the Islanders grabbed the lead, the Bruins’ Anders Bjork wrestled the game back even when he found a loose puck in front of the net and smashed a one-timer past Semyon Varlamov. In classic Islanders spirit, the team rallied in the face of defeat, with Anthony Beauvillier finding the game winning goal in OT to procure the all-important second point for the Isles. The story of the game for the Bruins, who were playing their first game since March 18th due to COVID-protocols, was that starting goaltender Tuuka Rask left the game after the first period with a reported upper-body injury. The Islanders were able to take advantage of the switch by besting (more than capable) backup and former Islander Jaroslav Halak four times in route to victory.