Kaapo Kakko scored twice and goaltender Alexandar Georgiev recorded the shutout as the visiting New York Rangers claimed a 4-0 victory over the free-falling and injury-riddled Philadelphia Flyers on Wednesday.
Artemi Panarin and Andrew Copp also scored, while Jacob Trouba and Barclay Goodrow each collected a pair of assists for the Rangers (48-21-6, 102 points), who sit two points behind the Metropolitan Division-leading Carolina Hurricanes. Carolina does have one game in hand.
Georgiev stopped 28 shots for his second shutout of the season and eighth in his career.
Felix Sandstrom made 30 saves for the Flyers (23-40-11, 57 points), who have lost four of five games. It’s only the second time in franchise history the Flyers have posted 40 regulation-time losses. The other was 2006-07.
Kakko, in his third game back after missing 31 due to an upper-body injury, notched his first goal in 15 outings just past the midway point of the first period. A strong forecheck from K’Andre Miller created a turnover that eventually saw Kakko, after taking a pass in the slot, wire a glove-side shot to open the scoring.
Kakko notched his second of the game, and seventh of the season, at 8:22 of the second period when Filip Chytil won a battle along the side boards before he sent a backhanded saucer pass that set up an easy tap-in tally.
Panarin then notched his third goal in four games to make it 3-0 at 11:03 of the middle frame, completing a nifty redirect of Trouba’s shot-pass for his 22nd goal of the season.
The Flyers, who were the better team in the first five minutes of the clash in an attempt to make amends for a 9-2 shellacking at the hands of the Washington Capitals on Tuesday, were overrun the rest of the way.
Copp’s short-handed empty net goal with 1:53 remaining, his 18th tally of the season, rounded out the scoring.
Hurting Philadelphia’s cause is the lengthy list of injured players, which included goalie Carter Hart, defenseman Rasmus Ristolainen and forward Cam Atkinson join after Tuesday’s game.
The Flyers were already without forwards Patrick Brown and Nate Thompson and defenseman Cam York.
–Field Level Media
