http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/sports/hockey/chris-kreider-new-york-rangers-san-jose-sharks.html 2016-10-18 05:46:53 Chris Kreider Leads Rangers Again in Win Over Sharks Chris Kreider had a goal and an assist for the third straight game, Mats Zuccarello had a goal and two assists, and Ryan McDonagh and Derek Stepan each had two assists to lead the Rangers. === For the third straight game, Chris Kreider had a goal and an assist as the Kreider, who signed a four-year, $18.5 million contract on July 22, has three goals and three assists in the Rangers’ first three games. According to the team, he is the first Ranger since Brian Leetch in 1992-93 to tally 6 points in the team’s first three games. He also became the first Rangers forward to record 6 points in three games to start a season since Bernie Nicholls and Darren Turcotte in 1990-91. Marc Staal, Rick Nash, Kevin Hayes, the rookie Jimmy Vesey, Mats Zuccarello and Michael Grabner also scored for the Rangers, who have won two of their first three games. With the game tied, 1-1, early in the second period, the Rangers took a lead for good 4 minutes 15 seconds into the period on Nash’s first goal of the season. The sequence began when Ryan McDonagh’s shot ricocheted off the end boards to Nash, who was in front of Martin Jones’s net. Jones finished with 22 saves. The lead grew to 3-1 about six minutes later when Kreider’s off-wing drive ticked off Jones’s stick and into the net. New York was 1 for 3 on the power play, and San Jose was 1 for 4. Staal’s one-timer 12:06 into the game put the Rangers ahead, 1-0. After Staal’s goal, though, the Sharks outshot the Rangers by 7-2 for the remainder of the period, culminated by Logan Couture’s 5-on-3 power-play tap-in with 57.5 seconds left. San Jose, which lost for the first time in three games this season, cut the deficit to 3-2 on Brent Burns’s second of the season at 9:13 of the third. The Rangers struck back quickly as Hayes and Vesey scored 21 seconds apart to push the lead to 5-2. The goals were the first of the season for both and, for Vesey, the first of his N.H.L. career. The Rangers signed Vesey, a Hobey Baker Award winner from Harvard, to a two-year free-agent contract on Aug. 19. The tack-on goals were significant, as Burns scored his second of the game 1:20 after Vesey scored, followed by Joe Pavelski’s first of the season at 15:31. Zuccarello and Grabner added empty-net goals. Rangers goaltender Antti Raanta made 26 saves on 30 shots.