Rangers’ Stadium Series win vs. Islanders brings chaos from start to finish

The drama didn’t end until Artemi Panarin’s goal just 10 seconds into overtime was upheld by officials, who consulted with the NHL’s Toronto headquarters because the puck crossed the line after the Islanders knocked their net off its moorings. On the play, Panarin stole the puck in front of the opposing net, then fired a shot from in close that pinballed off Islanders defenseman Noah Dobson and goalie Ilya Sorokin. Simply to force the extra session, the Rangers had to score two goals in the final four-plus minutes, pulling their goalie along the way, to erase a 5-3 deficit.

Panarin, who tied a career high with his 32nd goal, said he “had to hold back tears, just because it was that much of a spectacle.”

“The atmosphere was electric,” the 32-year-old forward added. “It was something I couldn’t compare anything else to.”

Earlier in the game, the Islanders held a 4-1 lead. That came after a frenetic two minutes to open the contest, which saw the Rangers score almost right away, followed immediately by a most unusual NHL debut.

Just by stepping onto the ice, Rangers forward Matt Rempe became the first player to have his first game in the NHL come in an outdoor setting. Rempe, a 21-year-old called up Friday from the Rangers’ top minor league affiliate in the wake of an injury to Blake Wheeler, didn’t wait long to make an impact.

Capitals ‘scratch and claw’ for a 4-3 victory in Montreal

After the Rangers jumped out to a 1-0 lead on a goal by Erik Gustafsson 1 minute 28 seconds into the game, Rempe was sent out for the ensuing faceoff. Before the contest could get back underway, he had already locked up with rugged Islanders winger Matt Martin for some agreed-upon fisticuffs.

Listed at 6-foot-7 and 241 pounds, Rempe used his hulking stature to fight the 6-3, battle-tested Martin to a draw. The fired-up rookie exhorted the crowd to cheer as he skated off to the penalty box after his first NHL shift lasted the shortest possible amount of time — officially recorded as one second — before the dropping of the gloves.

Rempe said afterward that when he was warming up on the ice before the game, he made eye contact with Martin and received tacit confirmation the two were destined to tangle.

“I know he’s a tough customer,” Rempe said of the Islanders winger, who is in his 14th full NHL season, “and I’ve got a lot of respect for him. … I was like, ‘Hell, yeah.’ ”

Rempe arrived in the NHL on the sixth anniversary of the death of his father, who suffered a fatal heart attack while shoveling snow at their home in Calgary.

“It’s crazy to think of that,” Rempe had said Saturday to lohud.com of the poignant timing. “I know that he’d be there with me. … He was my best buddy.”

Of his anticipation for Sunday’s game, Rempe said the day before: “I’m going to be juiced up to the max. I think I’m going to be buzzing out there.”

With the NHL delivering a second straight high-scoring affair in what it dubs the Stadium Series — which kicked off Saturday night at MetLife with the New Jersey Devils’ 6-3 win over the Philadelphia Flyers — thousands of fans were also buzzing. While the Rangers drew first blood, Rempe’s tussle with Martin seemed to ignite the Islanders, who racked up three unanswered goals before the game was eight minutes old. Just over a minute into the second period, they tacked on another, putting the Rangers in a three-score hole.

Two goals by the Rangers’ Vincent Trocheck pulled his squad within one before the second period ended, but then the Islanders’ Alexander Romanov scored early in the third. The two-score margin held until there were less than six minutes to go, at which point penalties against Romanov and Trocheck were quickly followed by one committed by the Islanders’ Mathew Barzal. That gave the Rangers a four-on-three power play, and Coach Peter Laviolette made the aggressive decision to press his advantage by pulling goalie Igor Shesterkin. The gamble paid off when the Rangers, swarming their opponents’ end of the rink, got a tip-on goal from Chris Kreider.

With just 2½ minutes to play, the Rangers again got a power play, and Mika Zibanejad one-timed a slap shot to tie the score at 5 and send his teammates and their legions of supporters into jubilation. Those heroics served to set the stage for Panarin’s stunning game-winner.

“To win the way we did was incredible,” Zibanejad said. “There’s no better way to finish it off.”

In an explanation of why Panarin’s goal was upheld, the NHL pointed to a passage in its rule book that states a referee may award a goal in such situations if the post has been displaced by a defending player, the attacking player has an imminent scoring chance and the puck passes between where the goal posts should be.

Replays of the goal showed that Dobson caused the displacement, albeit accidentally, just after Panarin created a scoring opportunity for himself.

“I don’t try to make any judgment on the call on the ice,” said Islanders Coach Patrick Roy. “Obviously, I would prefer [our defensemen] not to try a saucer [pass] in the middle of the ice. Instead, I would prefer to see our defensemen skating. That’s what we did pretty much all day long, and we had some success.”

All told, fans at MetLife on Sunday saw more goals tallied by New York teams than points scored in seven different games at the stadium this past NFL season by either the Giants or Jets. The Rangers improved their record to a league-best 5-0-0 in outdoor games, including a 2014 win over the Islanders at Yankee Stadium, since the NHL began staging them in 2003.

Sunday’s victory marked the first successful comeback from a three-goal deficit in the 41 outdoor games played thus far, per the Rangers, and the crowd of 79,690 was the largest ever to watch the team play.

“These games that take place are special. I’ve been fortunate enough to be a part of them,” Laviolette said. “There have been some good ones, but this one has to be up there near the top of the list.”