Mika Zibanejad scored twice in the second period as the New York Rangers beat the Calgary Flames 3–1 at Scotiabank Saddledome on Wednesday, November 11. His first goal came from below the goal line, using a rebound off Calgary goaltender Devin Cooley. His second came on a power play and brought him level with Daniel Sedin on 138 career NHL power-play goals. Joonas Korpisalo made 29 saves, including an early stop on Zayne Parekh that kept the game scoreless before either team had a lead to protect.

Alexis Lafreniere assisted on both Zibanejad goals. Adam Klapka cut Calgary’s deficit to one in the third period, and Tye Kartye scored into an empty net with seven seconds left. The final margin matched the lead New York had built in the second period, but the Rangers spent much of the third with a one-goal advantage. Calgary remained close enough to send the game to overtime until Kartye scored. New York improved to 11–8–1 with its fourth win in five games. The Flames fell to 8–10–1.

Korpisalo preserves a scoreless first period

The first period supplied the most difficult save of the night. At 3:41, Parekh took the puck from the right point, eluded Eeli Tolvanen and Glenn Gawdin, and went behind the New York net. He brought the puck around the post for a wraparound, forcing Korpisalo to reach back across the crease. The goaltender let go of his stick to extend his blocker hand and stopped the attempt. Calgary had worked the puck from the edge of the offensive zone to the goal line in one sequence, and the stop denied the Flames the reward for getting through two Rangers before they could recover their positions.

The situation matters more than the appearance of the save in isolation. Parekh’s route moved the play from a point where New York could expect a shot or pass from distance to a point behind the net, where the goaltender had to move from one post to the other while tracking the puck. For Calgary, a goal there would have changed which side could play from ahead. For New York, the save kept its options open through a first period in which neither team converted. The Rangers could start the second looking for the opening goal at even strength.

Korpisalo was making his second NHL start since coming off injured reserve on November 6. He had played once for Hartford of the American Hockey League on a conditioning assignment after a lower-body injury. He then won at Seattle in his season debut and followed it with the win in Calgary. The Rangers acquired him from the Boston Bruins in the offseason in exchange for forward prospect Kalle Vaisanen and a 2028 fourth-round draft pick. Two wins offer a limited sample, but the Calgary game demonstrates the value of having another available goaltender who can give the club a chance in a tight road game.

Two goals from different angles

Zibanejad opened the scoring 59 seconds into the second. He got around Joel Hanley and took the puck below the goal line. From there, he sent it into Cooley’s right pad area, and it caromed across the line. The NHL’s report confirms that the rebound was the intended route. The location gave him almost no direct path to goal. Cooley’s positioning as the play went behind the net left enough of an angle for Zibanejad to use the equipment as a surface and redirect the puck into the opening.

The first goal ended a seven-game run without a goal for Zibanejad. He had continued to contribute as a passer during the drought and left Calgary with six points over four consecutive games, two goals and four assists. That distinction explains the way his recent production changed. Before Wednesday the points were coming through chances that teammates finished. At the Saddledome he was the player who turned both second-period opportunities into goals, one by finding a route from a sharp angle and one by getting a clean release as the puck arrived.

The second came at 10:52. New York needed 13 seconds of power-play time to score. Pavel Dorofeyev moved the puck across the ice, and Zibanejad took it first time near the left faceoff dot. The shot beat Cooley under his left arm. Lafreniere earned his second assist of the period. A lateral pass asks the goaltender to travel across the crease and square up again. By shooting immediately, Zibanejad used the time Cooley was spending on that movement. Any extra touch to settle the puck would have given the goaltender time to set his feet and the penalty killers time to narrow the shooting lane.

The two goals also show what the lines on the ice can reveal about an attack. On the first, Zibanejad was beyond the goal line and had to bring Cooley into the play for the puck to end up in the net. On the second, his position at the faceoff circle made him a direct shooting threat as soon as Dorofeyev sent the pass across. Lafreniere’s two assists link those separate sequences. According to New York’s postgame notes, it was his sixth multipoint game of the season. His contributions came on both sides of the change in manpower.

Calgary’s answer makes the last minutes matter

The Flames found a route to goal on their own power play at 7:41 of the third. Yegor Sharangovich found Ryan Strome below the goal line, and Strome sent the puck out front for Klapka. From close range, Klapka slipped it through Korpisalo’s legs. Calgary pulled within 2–1 with more than 12 minutes still to play. The passing sequence opened a route from below the goal line to the area directly in front, where Klapka needed only a short touch to put a shot on target. From the crease, Korpisalo had to turn with the pass and then cover a finish from close range.

Calgary kept pressing for the equalizer. Cooley stopped 21 shots over the game and came out late so Calgary could put an extra skater on the ice. Kartye’s goal at 19:53 removed the threat of an equalizer. It was his seventh of the season, second on the Rangers at the time according to the club. The timing matters when reading the score. The two-goal cushion shown in the final result was absent while Calgary chased the game in the closing minutes. The Rangers had to defend one additional goal’s worth of margin until they could clear the puck and finish the game.

Korpisalo’s first-period stop and Calgary’s third-period goal also offer a useful comparison. Parekh took the puck behind the net himself and tried to carry it around the post. On the Calgary power play, Strome had the puck below the goal line and sent it to a teammate already positioned to finish. One play put the pressure on a goalie’s ability to reach the far post. The other made him track a pass away from the boards and respond to a shot from close range. Calgary got a goal from the second approach after Korpisalo had preserved the score on the first.

A Swedish scoring milestone and a Calgary memory

The power-play goal put Zibanejad alongside Sedin for second on the NHL career list among Swedish players. Vancouver’s official records credit Sedin with 138, and Mats Sundin leads the group with 160. This is a count of goals scored with the manpower advantage, accumulated over an NHL career. It gives Wednesday’s shot a different context from Zibanejad’s first goal. The rebound off Cooley ended his goal drought. The shot from the circle added to a career total that places him alongside one of Vancouver’s most productive forwards on the power play.

The Rangers also counted the performance as Zibanejad’s 43rd game with multiple goals for the club, level with Andy Bathgate for fifth in team history. That measure is separate from the Swedish power-play list. The franchise count includes all of his games with at least two goals for New York, whatever the strength of the teams when he scored. The Swedish list counts only goals on the power play across an NHL career. Wednesday’s two goals moved him into a tie on both measures because he scored twice in the game and one of those goals came with an extra skater.

The arena brought another part of his career into view. On January 5, 2012, Zibanejad scored 10:09 into overtime at the Saddledome to give Sweden a 1–0 win against Russia in the world junior championship final. It was Sweden’s first title in the tournament in 31 years. The International Ice Hockey Federation records that the Swedes put 58 shots on net, with Russian goaltender Andrei Makarov keeping the final scoreless through regulation. Zibanejad’s breakaway ended a championship game in which Sweden had spent a long time trying to convert its territorial and shooting advantage into a single goal.

Calgary is playing its final season at the Saddledome, according to the NHL. The 2012 goal was a finish on a breakaway in a sudden-death final. Wednesday’s goals came in the middle of a regular-season game, with room for Calgary to recover and a third period still to play. The building connects those moments, even though the goals had very different consequences. One secured a medal; the others gave New York the advantage in a game that still required Korpisalo’s work and Kartye’s late finish.

New York heads to Vancouver after two wins in three road games

The Rangers had lost 3–1 in Edmonton on Monday after winning at Seattle. Wednesday gave them a second victory in the first three games of the trip, which concludes Friday, November 13, in Vancouver. Field Level Media reported that New York had won only one of its first seven away games before this stretch. Those early road results explain the value of taking points in Calgary even after a loss two nights earlier. The club also recorded its sixth game of the season allowing one goal or fewer, according to its postgame notes.

For Calgary, Wednesday was the end of a three-game homestand. Cooley’s five-game home winning streak ended even though his team stayed close until the final seconds. The Flames had chances to lead in the first and to equalize in the third, and the score records the one they converted in between. New York found the decisive scoring opportunity in the second period, through a power play that took seconds to turn a pass across the zone into a goal. The Rangers still had to make that advantage hold for nearly half the game. That is where the work of Korpisalo and the timing of Kartye’s empty-net goal belong alongside Zibanejad’s two finishes in the account of the win.

Sources

Archive photograph of Mika Zibanejad with the Rangers in Buffalo on March 31, 2023. Photo by Tlop2000 via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Talal Osman