Following Kucherov: Panarin scored three times in the match with Columbus and was the second Russian to surpass the 80-point mark

Artemiy Panarin continues his rivalry with Nikita Kucherov for the title of best Russian forward in the current season of the National Hockey League.

The New York Rangers forward was recognized as the first star of the opposition in the home match with Columbus.

It was the ninth time during the regular season that he scored three or more points.

The hockey player scored a double and an assist, thus updating his sniper record.

Previously, the most successful season for Artemy in terms of goals was the 2019/20 season.

Then he scored 32 goals in 69 meetings.

In the current championship, Panarin already has 35 of them.

In total, the Rangers forward scored 251 times during his career and came out in clear 13th place in this indicator among Russians, surpassing Alexei Zhamnov (249).

In addition, the striker became the second domestic athlete to score more than 80 points this season.

He now has 82 of them (35+47).

Kucherov was the first to cross the line.

He continues to lead the list of top NHL scorers (103), and Panarin ranks fifth on it.

Interestingly, the forward was only the third player in Rangers history to reach 80 points in at least four seasons for the team.

The Russian found himself in the company of Mark Messier and Rod Gilbert.

However, Artemy is still far from reaching personal records for this indicator.

The 2021/22 season is considered the best for the forward so far.

Then he scored 96 points during the regular season.

At the same time, the match with Columbus was extremely important for the Rangers.

Although the Blue Jackets occupy last place in the Eastern Conference standings, they are a very inconvenient opponent for Peter Laviolette's men.

This season, the opponents scored five points out of a possible six in head-to-head matches.

And the last victory was won just three days ago, on February 26, with a score of 4:2.

And the New Yorkers, as Panarin noted after the game, really wanted to take revenge in front of their fans.

“We definitely talked in the locker room about coming together after the last game and returning the favor to Columbus,” Artemy said. 

The hosts immediately went forward and in the first period made twice as many shots on the opponent's goal.

Columbus also did not sit back on defense, but in the first 20 minutes neither team was able to score.

At the beginning of the second period, the guests were close to scoring, but the crossbar prevented them.

As a result, the New Yorkers were the first to score: although Vincent Trocheck lost the throw-in, the puck, after a series of ricochets, still reached Panarin, who sent it straight into the goal.

A few minutes later, Adam Fox's power play increased the Rangers' lead.

At the start of the third period, Columbus took the initiative, and this immediately resulted in a goal.

True, there was a mistake made by Igor Shesterkin.

The New York goalkeeper unsuccessfully launched the puck along the boards and did not have time to take a position, which Cole Sillinger took advantage of.

“[I'm] very good in goal and very bad behind it.

I need to work on my stick handling,” Shesterkin joked after the match.

However, the missed goal did not affect the Russian’s game in any way.

He made no more mistakes, and made 30 saves during the match.

As a result, Columbus, although it had a large number of chances, was unable to equalize the score.

And when the guests took off the goalkeeper at the end, they immediately got two more own goals: first Panarin did not become greedy and passed the ball to Chris Kreider, and then he scored himself by sending the puck from his blue line.

Thus, the Rangers took revenge for the recent defeat and came out on top in the Eastern Conference, becoming the first club in the current regular season to win 40 victories.

“The plan for February was to do this month better [than the previous one] and let our actions speak for what we want to achieve this month.

I think the guys did a good job.

Take the last game [three] days ago, where we failed to win: we came back and finished it the way we wanted.

We're moving on.

[Now] we'll take March and move forward,” Rangers head coach Peter Laviolette said.

In another match of the day, Edmonton defeated St. Louis in overtime with a score of 3:2.

One of the goals for the Blues was scored by Pavel Buchnevich.

Moreover, this goal was his 80th career goal for the team.