Rangers vs. Canucks: Tye Kartye and Will Cuylle Score Twice Each in First Game Without Igor Shesterkin

One day after the New York Rangers announced that Igor Shesterkin would miss the rest of the season, they handed the net to a 24-year-old who had cleared waivers before the season. Dylan Garand did not need to steal the game. His teammates made sure of it.

Tye Kartye and Will Cuylle scored two goals apiece, Garand made 19 saves, and the Rangers pulled away in the third period to beat the Vancouver Canucks 6-2 on Sunday night at Madison Square Garden. Alexis Lafrenière and Gabe Perreault each had a goal and an assist, J.T. Miller and Mika Zibanejad had two assists apiece, and New York stayed perfect at home.

Life After Shesterkin Starts Fast

Shesterkin was hurt in Friday's 3-1 loss at Washington, and the Rangers announced Saturday that Garand would get the chance to be the new No. 1. The AP noted Garand had been placed on waivers before the season and went unclaimed. Spencer Martin dressed as his backup.

The skaters gave him a cushion right away. Kartye scored 27 seconds into the game, set up by Miller and Lafrenière, and the Garden got the exhale it needed.

Vancouver answered at 17:04 when Jake DeBrusk beat Garand from a sharp angle in the left circle, with Jonathan Lekkerimaki assisting. Cuylle restored the lead at 2:09 of the second, ripping a shot past Kevin Lankinen's glove from the top of the left circle off a feed from Noah Laba.

The Stretch That Decided It

Then came the most chaotic three minutes of the night. Guillaume Brisebois went off for holding at 15:23 of the second, and the Rangers' power play promptly gave one away. Defenseman Elias Pettersson scored short-handed at 16:56, the first short-handed goal of his career per NHL.com, with Brendan Gallagher and Drew O'Connor assisting. Tie game, 2-2, and a power play that had just backfired.

Most teams sag there. The Rangers needed 1:29 to answer. Vladislav Gavrikov started it with a tidy breakout pass to Miller, who whipped it across to Kartye, and Kartye picked the near side from the left circle at 18:25. It was 3-2, and the lead held the rest of the way.

"It could be deflating when you give up one on your power play, and that was a big part of the game, that stretch there," Rangers coach Mike Sullivan said. "I thought it was a good response."

Turning Point: Boeser's Trip and a Third-Period Blitz

Brock Boeser was whistled for tripping at 19:17 of the second, carrying a Rangers power play into the third, and Lafrenière cashed it in 1:04 into the period. Perreault set him up while Lankinen was caught outside his crease after bumping into Miller. The officials huddled, the goal counted, and Vancouver did not challenge. Per the AP, it was Lafrenière's team-leading fifth goal.

Perreault made it 5-2 at 5:57 by deflecting an Adam Fox shot, and Cuylle cleaned up a rebound at 15:22 for the 6-2 final, with Eeli Tolvanen and Braden Schneider assisting.

Sullivan noted the improvement over 60 minutes. "I thought the third period we were terrific," he said.

Kartye, Cuylle and a Milestone for Zibanejad

Both of Kartye's goals came with Miller assists, and they were his first two of the season. The same went for Cuylle. Kartye finished plus-2 in 15:39, and Cuylle added four hits in the same amount of ice time. That kind of secondary scoring is the difference between surviving a franchise goalie's absence and drowning in it.

Miller was excellent in the middle too, winning 12 of his 16 faceoffs to go with his two assists, and the Rangers dominated the dot 31-19 as a team. Zibanejad's assist on the Lafrenière goal made him the third player in Rangers history with at least 250 power-play points for the club, joining Brian Leetch and Rod Gilbert.

Garand, meanwhile, was steady rather than spectacular, stopping 19 of 21. He handled the moment with perspective.

"It's obviously tough when you lose your best player in 'Shesty,' a guy who plays so well for this team for so long and is such a big part of it," Garand said. "I think the guys did a great job of stepping up tonight and we're going to need more of that for sure."

For Vancouver, Lankinen made 19 saves on 25 shots. The Canucks out-hit New York 33-22, but they could not convert that physicality into much beyond DeBrusk's goal and Pettersson's short-handed strike.

Stats That Matter

• 3-0: Third-period score. NHL.com noted the Rangers have outscored opponents 9-1 in the third period at home this season.
• 31-19: Faceoffs, Rangers vs. Canucks, a 62 percent clip for New York.
• 1:29: Time between Pettersson's tying short-handed goal and Kartye's go-ahead goal.
• 250: Power-play points for Zibanejad with the Rangers.
• 33-22: Hits, Vancouver vs. New York.

What It Means

The Rangers improve to 5-2-0 with 10 points and are 4-0-0 at home, their fourth straight home win to start the season. That is a strong foundation for a team that now has to find a new identity in goal. Sullivan sounded unfazed.

"Expectations don't change. It's the next man up mentality," he said. Tampa Bay visits Tuesday.

Vancouver falls to 2-5-0 under new coach Manny Malhotra and has lost four straight, including a 4-1 loss at New Jersey on Saturday. The Canucks are 1-3-0 on the road, and the second half of a weekend back-to-back exposed them late.

"It's disappointing when you let the game get away from you like that. Lack of details. Lack of intensity to finish the game and the final score ends up being what it is," Malhotra said.

O'Connor was even more direct: "Bad third period." Vancouver visits the New York Islanders on Tuesday.

Next Goalie Up

Losing a goalie of Shesterkin's stature usually ends with a team pretending everything is fine for about a week before reality arrives. Maybe that still happens. But on Sunday, the Rangers looked like a group determined to make the plot twist work, with Garand playing the understudy who gets the call on opening night and the rest of the cast making sure he never had to carry the whole show.

"I think it's just a ton of buy-in from our group," Garand said. Six goals of buy-in, to be exact.

Stats from the official box score via ESPN. Game details from the Associated Press and NHL.com; postgame quotes as reported by NHL.com.