Rangers Close Out Ducks 5-2 at MSG: Bjorkstrand Scores Twice, Garand Nearly Perfect

The New York Rangers did everything right for 58 minutes on Monday night at Madison Square Garden, and the only blemish on the evening arrived too late to change anything except the record of how close they came to perfection. Oliver Bjorkstrand scored twice, rookie goaltender Dylan Garand made 29 saves and came within 69 seconds of his second career shutout, and New York beat the Anaheim Ducks 5-2 in a final that was settled long before the visitors finally got on the board. The Rangers led 1-0 after the first period, 4-0 after the second, and 5-0 early in the third, according to the scoring summary published by puckfeed, before Nick Jensen and A.J. Greer scored in the final 69 seconds to spoil the shutout. Previously tracked the rout as it built in our live file from MSG; this is the final wrap.

An opening goal that made a little history

New York wasted no time setting the tone. Sean Durzi scored 1:18 into the contest, from Pavel Dorofeyev and Tye Kartye, to give the Rangers a 1-0 lead they never gave back. Reuters, in its roundup filed via Field Level Media, noted the significance beyond the scoreboard: Durzi’s goal marked the second time in team history the Rangers scored within the opening two minutes of a third straight home game. It is the kind of start that changes how both benches manage the night. Anaheim was chasing from the second shift onward, and New York could play the rest of the first period with the structure and patience of a team that did not need to force anything.

The 1-0 lead held through the first intermission, and for Anaheim that was the high-water mark of the competitive portion of the game. The Ducks were still within one mistake, one bounce, of a tie game when the second period began. By the time the second intermission arrived, that possibility was gone.

The second period broke the game open

The Rangers scored three times in the second period, and each goal widened a different part of the problem for Anaheim. J.T. Miller made it 2-0 at 4:38 of the second, a power-play goal assisted by Adam Fox and Alexis Lafrenière, per puckfeed. A power-play strike early in a period is a double blow for a trailing team: it rewards the home side for drawing the penalty in the first place, and it tells the visitors that even their defensive structure, set and organized, is not enough to keep the game close.

Gabe Perreault followed at 10:17, assisted by Mika Zibanejad and Lafrenière, to make it 3-0. Puckfeed credited Perreault’s goal as the game-winner, which in a 5-2 final is technically accurate and also understates how decisive the sequence felt in real time. Teams do come back from 3-0 down. They rarely do it on the road, against a goaltender having the night Garand was having, with a building as loud as the Garden gets when a young player scores an insurance goal in the middle period.

Oliver Bjorkstrand added the fourth at 13:14 of the second, unassisted in the puckfeed summary, to send the Rangers to the dressing room up 4-0. Three goals in less than nine minutes of game time turned a tight 1-0 contest into a rout, and it did so without any single moment of chaos. There was no fight, no controversial call, no injury to a key Anaheim player described in either report. New York simply converted its chances in sequence — power play, even strength, and then again — until the margin matched the run of play.

Bjorkstrand again, and Garand’s near shutout

Bjorkstrand was not done. At 3:26 of the third period he scored his second of the night, assisted by Taylor Raddysh and Braden Schneider, to push the lead to 5-0, according to puckfeed. The two-goal night earned him first-star honors, with Lafrenière — whose two assists both came on second-period goals that broke the game open — named the second star and Perreault the third, per puckfeed’s three stars.

From there, the only remaining question was whether Garand would finish the shutout. Reuters reported that he came within 69 seconds of his second career shutout, and the arithmetic is precise: Jensen scored at 18:51 of the third, from Alex Killorn and Frank Vatrano, to make it 5-1 with 1:09 left, and Greer followed at 19:27, assisted by Pavel Mintyukov, to close the scoring at 5-2 with 33 seconds remaining, per puckfeed. Two goals in 36 seconds, both after the outcome had been decided for nearly an entire period, turned a shutout line into a merely excellent one: 29 saves, a win at home, and a rookie performance that deserved the cleaner ending it nearly got.

There is a temptation to treat late goals in a blowout as cosmetic, and mostly they are. But for Garand personally they are the difference between a second career shutout on his record and a footnote about how close he came, and for Anaheim they are at least something to carry into the next game of a losing streak that has now reached three. Reuters noted the Ducks have lost three in a row, and puckfeed listed Anaheim at 4-4-0 after the loss — a .500 record that looks considerably worse in motion than it does standing still, because the motion is all in one direction.

What the win means for New York

The standings context is where this result does its real work for the Rangers. Reuters reported that New York stopped its first losing streak of the opening weeks — a brief 0-1-1 skid — and improved to 6-0-0 at home. Puckfeed listed the Rangers at 7-3-1 overall after the win. An unbeaten home record six games into the home schedule is not yet a fortress, but it is a foundation, and it matters disproportionately in October, when teams are still sorting out lines, pairs, and goaltending rotations. Winning the games at home while those questions are still open buys a coaching staff the time to answer them without a standings hole to climb out of.

The scoring distribution should encourage New York as much as the result itself. Five goals came from four different scorers — Durzi, Miller, Perreault, and Bjorkstrand twice — and the assists were spread across Fox, Lafrenière, Zibanejad, Dorofeyev, Kartye, Raddysh, and Schneider. Lafrenière’s two-assist night, both in the decisive second period, is the kind of contribution that does not lead a highlight package but wins the star selection anyway, and Perreault scoring the credited game-winner gives the Rangers production from the younger end of the roster on the same night the veterans, Miller included, delivered on the power play.

It was a busy Monday night across the league, and the Rangers’ result sits comfortably alongside the evening’s other headline final — Toronto’s 3-1 win over San Jose behind rookie Gavin McKenna’s game-winner, covered in our wrap of the Leafs-Sharks final. If McKenna’s night was the league’s rookie story in Toronto, Garand’s was its counterpart at the Garden: a young goaltender, in a famous building, flirting with a shutout deep into the third period of a game his team controlled from the 78-second mark onward.

The bottom line

Finals can flatter and finals can deceive, and 5-2 manages a little of both here. It flatters Anaheim, who were out of this game by the middle of the second period and scored both goals in the final 69 seconds against a team protecting a five-goal lead. It deceives anyone who glances at Garand’s line without the context, because 29 saves with two goals against does not capture how close he was to a shutout, or how little doubt there was about the winner from the moment Perreault made it 3-0. The accurate summary is the one the period lines tell: 1-0, 4-0, 5-0, and then a late footnote. The Rangers are perfect at home, their skid is over after two games, and the Ducks leave New York still searching for the end of theirs.

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