Creative Panarin

This season can hardly be called super-successful for Artemy Panarin.

To date, the leader of the Rangers had only 47 points in 46 meetings and showed the worst rate of scoring (1.02) since playing for Columbus, barely staying in the top thirty top scorers.

At the same time, the Russian had not only problems with sales, which fell below 10%.

So, a year ago, after a similar number of matches played, his track record included more than 40 effective passes, while in this, albeit not much, but still less (35).

On the eve of the confrontation with Florida, Panarin was going through one of the most unsuccessful segments in the regular season.

In six games, he was content with only two (1 + 1) points, and in four of them he left the ice “dry”.

However, black streaks cannot last forever, and it was on this day that Artemy was finally lucky.

For the fourth time in the tournament, the striker scored an assistant hat-trick and helped the New Yorkers succeed, and he himself received the title of the second star of the match.

Until the end of the first period, Panarin managed to organize two goals for the Rangers and prepare a springboard for a major victory for the wards of Gerard Gallan (6:2).

Already in the fourth minute, he picked up the puck left by Mika Zibanejad at the side, let Anton Lundell close to him, and then threw it at Adam Fox, who rushed forward.

And he did it lightly, in order to give a teammate a chance to get to her, and to lull the vigilance of the defenders.

The plan worked perfectly, and the American implemented an impromptu bullet.

The next masterpiece performed by Artemy had to wait a little over 14 minutes.

With the score 1:1, the star Russian came out in the majority special team and found Mika Zibenazhad with an excellent cross pass.

Together with the same Fox, they diverted the attention of opponents and forced them to shift to the left flank, leaving the Swede all alone.

Like Alexander Ovechkin, he located himself in the face-off circle and hit the near corner with a powerful throw.

However, the adventures of the star trio "Rangers" did not end there.

In the middle of the final period, they again drew the most beautiful combination and in total for the fifth time caught Lion by surprise.

Fox connected Panarin to the attack, and he broke through on the left side and cut out the most accurate pass to Zibanezhad from the backhand.

Caught courage Swede threw the puck right over the goalkeeper's trap and thus strengthened in the status of the first star.

As for Panarin, a bright performance helped him not only return to the top ten assistants in the league, but also the fourth of the Russians to reach the mark of 50 points in a season.

At the moment, the elite club includes Nikita Kucherov (66), Kirill Kaprizov (56) and Alexander Ovechkin (52).

In addition, Panarin continued the correspondence dispute with Kucherov for the title of the best domestic passer in recent years.

The Rangers star now has 420 assists, two more than the Lightning leader.

At the same time, he held only 555 meetings, while Nikita - 52 more.

Marchenko's 10th goal and Samsonov's assist

However, Panarin was not the only Russian who managed to usefully spend another game day.

Take, for example, his teammate Igor Shesterkin, who saved 33 out of 35 shots (94.2%), or Calgary defender Nikita Zadorov, who not only participated in the scoring combination, but also completed the confrontation with Columbus with the best indicator of usefulness among all its participants ("+4").

Special attention deserves his compatriot Kirill Marchenko, who spends a rather controversial debut season.

On the one hand, in 24 matches, the young Russian has already scored ten goals.

On the other hand, so far he has never helped his partners score.

The anniversary puck fell just in time for the meeting with the Calgary, where the two-time winner of the World Youth Championship was great to join the attack at a second pace and hit exactly in the near top corner.

The meeting between Toronto and the Islanders was remembered not only by William Nylander's four points and Anders Lee's double, but also by the duel of Russian goalkeepers.

Both parried more than 30 shots, but if Ilya Sorokin limited himself to only spectacular saves in the frame, then his namesake Samsonov had a hand in one of the team's goals.

It was he who found the ubiquitous Swede not far from the blue line, and he had already brought John Tavares to the gate.

The Canadian himself admitted that he did not expect this from the Russian, although he had already performed similar programs this season.

Tavares praised Samsonov and confirmed that he is actively involved in all aspects of Toronto's game.