Knies breaks tie in 3rd, Maple Leafs edge Rangers for 4th straight win

Matthew Knies broke a tie 6:21 into the third period, and the Toronto Maple Leafs defeated the New York Rangers 3-2 at Madison Square Garden in New York on Friday.

Mitch Marner knocked down Igor Shesterkin’s attempt to rim the puck around the glass while behind his net and the loose puck came to Auston Matthews, who fed Knies in the slot for a shot that beat Shesterkin over his blocker for the 3-2 lead.

“We had a good forecheck there,” Knies said. “Mitch did a good job stopping the puck, stopping the rim there. Auston made a great play in the middle, and I just had to get it past him.”

The goal came 2:34 after the Rangers tied it 2-2 at 3:47 of the third period short-handed. Nicholas Robertson turned the puck over just inside the offensive zone. leading to a 2-on-1 where Will Cuylle deked Anthony Stolarz to the backhand after taking a pass from Mika Zibanejad.

“That’s tough,” Cuylle said. “Obviously felt like we deserved better overall tonight. We outshot them 2-1 so it stings obviously. We did a lot of good things, but some bad breakdowns and we need the two points this late in the season and where we are at in the standings, it hurts.”

Oliver Ekman-Larsson and William Nylander scored, and Stolarz made 33 saves for the Maple Leafs (37-20-2), who have won four in a row and seven of their past eight.

“Stolarz, he’s on fire,” Nylander said. “Just the way he stopped shots today, stood on his head and made some really big saves at key times for us.”

Zibanejad had a goal and an assist, and Shesterkin made 14 saves for the Rangers (29-26-4), who had won two in a row and three of their past four.

“I thought we defended pretty well but we made a mistake in the second period and then they got a look, they buried it in the third …,” New York coach Peter Laviolette said. “We were looking, we were hunting the entire night and just didn’t get rewarded for it.”

The Maple Leafs withstood the final 2:06 of the third period playing 5-on-6 while Shesterkin was pulled for an extra skater. The Rangers generated two shots and four shot attempts.

“They hemmed us in a few times in the last two minutes,” Knies said. “We iced the puck a lot just trying to get it out of our end so I think that they were really desperate at the end of the game. Fortunately for us, Stolarz was great and we had a great team effort at the end there.”

Nylander put the Maple Leafs up 2-1 51 seconds into the second period. After taking a stretch pass from Jake McCabe at the Rangers blue line that sprung him on a breakaway, Nylander jammed a shot at the side of the net which sat on the goal line until Urho Vaakanainen inadvertently put it in off Shesterkin’s glove while trying to clear it.

The play was initially ruled no goal, but video review initiated by the NHL Situation Room showed the puck had completely crossed the goal line.

“I was going to shoot but I kind of got hooked a little bit, so the puck ended up beside the net, I just tried to throw it in front, and it was in the net,” Nylander said. “I don’t really know what happened. I saw it cross the line, so I knew it was a goal.”

The Maple Leafs went up 1-0 at 1:47 of the first period on the power play when Ekman-Larsson took a cross-slot pass from Max Domi and shot from above the right hashmarks.

“A couple mental lapses on our part that ended up killing us in the end but overall, I think there was a lot of good things to take away,” Rangers forward Vincent Trocheck said. “You’re disappointed but every game this late in the season, you have to look at it, take what you can, learn from it and then move on to the next game, you can’t really focus on it too long.”

Zibanejad tied it 1-1 at 13:08 when he redirected a pass from Will Borgen at the side of the net.

“A little lackluster in my opinion but we found a way to get a win,” Toronto coach Craig Berube said. “But I didn’t think we generated enough offensively or got to our game tonight with our forecheck and our hard play down in the offensive zone. It was in and out too quick, so we spent too much time playing in our end. But our penalty kill was really good and our goalie was really good. I thought our defense battled hard back there but we didn’t do enough with the puck.”

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