Mike Mazzeo, ESPN Staff Writer 9y

There's no stopping Nash just yet


NEW YORK -- The Carolina Hurricanes became the first team to hold Rick Nash without a point this season.

But the NHL’s hottest player still managed to find the back of the net anyway.

Nash scored in the third round of the shootout, Henrik Lundqvist made 29 saves and stopped all three shooters he faced in the skills competition, and the New York Rangers snapped a three-game losing streak with a 2-1 victory over the floundering Hurricanes on Thursday night at Madison Square Garden.

“He’s hot right now,” Derrick Brassard said of Nash, who has a league-leading six goals in his first five games this season. “I’ve known him for a long time, and as soon as I saw him in the first practice, I knew he meant business. He’s been really good for us, and we are going to need him to be good for the rest of the season.”

Nash beat Anton Khudobin with a backhand-to-forehand deke, sliding the puck under the Hurricanes goaltender’s stick.

“He was playing pretty deep, so I was thinking shoot,” Nash said. “And then I looked up and [the shot] wasn’t there, so I had to come up with something else.”

Did he ever.

Lundqvist got his glove on Ryan Murphy's snapshot at the other end of the rink to end it. And the Rangers (2-3-0), who had surrendered 17 goals in their previous three games, were able to exhale.

“I think we needed it,” said Lundqvist, who, after surrendering six goals in each of his two previous starts, sported the celebratory “Broadway Hat” in the locker room after the game. “We needed to feel like we can play a solid, 60-minute game.”

Going into Thursday night’s game, Rangers coach Alain Vigneault called out his team’s top defensemen, urging them to play better. Vigneault felt they played “safer” against the Hurricanes.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was a step in the right direction.

“There’s an old American saying in pro sports: ‘Never critique a win,’” Vigneault said with a laugh. “So I’m gonna stick with that.”

The Rangers got off to a good start, out-shooting the Hurricanes 7-2 early in the first period. But they went a stretch of over nine minutes without a shot, as Lundqvist was pelted with 10 straight.

They fell behind 1-0 in the second after Chris Terry’s shot changed direction and were booed off the ice at the end of the middle frame.

Vigneault elected to do something he rarely does, change up his line combinations to try to jumpstart his team. Rookie Anthony Duclair was moved from the top line to the fourth line, while Martin St. Louis was moved from center to the wing. Derick Brassard was reunited with Mats Zuccarello, and both ended up getting their sticks on Dan Girardi’s shot from the right-wing boards, which resulted in Brassard’s third goal of the season and a 1-1 tie midway through the third.

“Sometimes you gotta shuffle the deck a little bit,” Vigneault said. “I was looking for nine guys that I felt could give us a little spark, and I just lost [Duclair] in the rotation.”

The goal changed the complexion of the game and enabled the Rangers to earn two points for the first time since their season-opener in St. Louis.

Their power-play still has yet to score in 2014-15 (0-for-16) and they clearly miss injured No. 1 pivot Derek Stepan, but they’ll just have to make due.

It’s early, but as Lundqvist said, the Rangers need to start playing better hockey and accumulating points.

As long as Nash is scoring the way he has, you’d think that wouldn’t be a problem.

“No. 1, the puck’s going in,” Nash replied when asked why he’s been able to get off to such a hot start. “A couple of those goals [I’ve scored] don’t go in other times of the year, but they are now, and the key is my linemates are playing well together. But at the end of the day, we only have two wins, so it doesn’t matter that much.”

Not true, Rick. It most definitely does.

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