Goaltender Cam Talbot stopped 25 of 26 shots faced, including nine in the third period. The New York Rangers prospects put 33 shots on net in the losing effort.
“The goaltending was really solid at both ends. Talbot came up with a number of big saves,” said Gordie Clark, Director, Player Personnel, New York Rangers. “Down at the other end, we were just taking shot after shot. We had breakaways from (Derek) Stepan and (Christian) Thomas and he stopped those. He also took one in the face. If (Carolina goaltender Mike) Murphy doesn’t throw that game at us, we were carrying most of the play the whole night.”
The New York Rangers prospects next take the ice Tuesday, September 14 against the Minnesota Wild prospects at 3:30pm ET.
Would have been nice if they let you know who scored the Carolina goal and that it came with only 56 seconds left in the game. So it’s one close win and one close loss for the Rangers kids. Now they need to win Tuesday and get some help to reach the championship game.
Not sure why, in the last minute, Gernander had 3 guys they scratched Saturday (Baldwin and tryout Manning on D, and Tessier) on the ice. Winning isn’t critical, but as Torts would say, is part of the process. From what little is out there, it seems there’s a gap between the top 6-7 F’s (Grach, Step, Bourque, Thomas, Horak, Werek, maybe McKelvie) and the rest, not surprising given age, experience and past performance
Elsie: How did you find out who was on the ice for the Wolf Pack when Carolina scored? There’s definitely going to be a wide difference between top players such as Grachev, Stepan, Bourque, McDonagh, etc., and tryouts such as Manning. I’m sure Gernander was trying to get everyone in every situation, but it is strange that those guys were on the ice in the final minute unless there had just been a line change.