Kakko with his best game of the season, he seems motivated to stay on that line but it also looks like practice is translating over to consistent shifts as well. Strome called it Kakko's best game of the season and credited his tic-tac-toe goal with Panarin to Kakko's defensive play to get it started.
Igor is getting going, which is great. When Igor was on his game last year it just felt like early Lundqvist, where he isn't beat by a straight shot hardly ever, even most one timers, and that you really need a rebound or some serious traffic in front of the net and a deflection to do it. He looked like that tonight.
Lindgren played great, our guys that can grind are very important playing teams like the Caps.
Trouba has been silently much better this year imo
Panarin is really something special, which is obvious... but I'm talking about his shifts at the end of the game, he goes out there and forechecks/backchecks his ass off in a pure effort to win this game and close it out. Real hard nosed play. Not a lot of superstars put forth that same effort in the regular season, let alone the early parts of it.
Bitteto growing up a big Rangers fan, not scoring in 3 years, having his last 3 professional goals disallowed, and then doing that was really cool. This will be one of the most memorable hockey moments of his career (despite the fact in the post game interview he said he blacked out when it happened haha)
Panarin and Igor goofing around about the Georgiev/Deangelo incident was funny but also a sign of good things.
@Machinehead mentioned it too, but it is signs of good spirits. Feels like getting Tony out with how he has been the last month is just like a big sigh of relief for these guys.
3-0-1 in the last 4. Giddy up