NEW YORK — For a chunk of the regular season, Barclay Goodrow couldn’t buy a goal if it was left behind at a yard sale with a “for free” sign. He went 56 games, from late November to late March, without scoring. The 31-year-old wanted to contribute more offensively, and his $3.64 million average annual value contract called for him to do so. The pucks just weren’t going in the net.
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Maybe he was saving them for when they matter most. Late Friday night, he scored a playoff goal — his fourth of the postseason — worth a dozen regular-season ones, and probably more. With just over six minutes left in overtime, the center, initially on the ice to take a defensive zone faceoff, grabbed a breakout pass from New York Rangers captain Jacob Trouba. He cut through the neutral zone and passed to Vincent Trocheck for a clean entry into the Florida Panthers’ end. Trocheck gave him the puck back.
Then, from the high slot, Goodrow let it rip. The puck soared through the air and past goalie Sergei Bobrovsky, who had won 12 playoff overtime games in a row. As it rattled around the back of the net and eventually into the crease, Goodrow went down to a knee and punched the air.
Game 2 was over. The series was even.
“Oh my gosh, that was unbelievable,” rookie Matt Rempe said after the Rangers’ 2-1 win. “Absolute snipe.”
“Great shot,” added Adam Fox.
“Very happy,” the often-understated Goodrow said. “I don’t really remember exactly how it went in.”
BARCLAY. GOODROW.
END. GAME. pic.twitter.com/7DpHRjsNco— x – New York Rangers (@NYRangers) May 25, 2024
The Rangers, throughout this season and over the course of these playoffs, have had a knack for generating big goals when they need them most. That propelled them to two overtime wins against Carolina, as well as a comeback in the third period of Game 6.
But the Panthers also know how to score in big moments. It’s how they reached the Stanley Cup Final last season and how they picked apart Tampa Bay and Boston in the first two rounds this year. Florida had won 11 playoff overtime games in a row entering Game 2.
Someone had to break the draw between the two teams that know how to grind out wins as well as anyone. As so often seems to be the case in the playoffs, the leading man was not the superstar player. In this instance, it was Goodrow, who takes pride in all the small details of the game. He won 77 percent of his faceoffs in Game 2 and played on the penalty kill. Florida’s Carter Verhaeghe and Matthew Tkachuk, both top-six players, were his most common forward matchups, counting both even-strength and penalty-kill situations. And though the Rangers didn’t lead in shot attempts or expected goals with Goodrow on the ice, they led in actual goals. That was the difference in the game.
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“You see him take those D-zone draws all the time,” Trouba said. “It’s a thankless job. He only gets talked about if he loses them. He wins them, which he does a lot of the time, nobody ever talks about it. He’s a huge part of the locker room, leadership group, everything he brings to our team. Very well deserved.”
Added Rempe: “Goody’s that guy.”
The Panthers wanted the officials to review if Goodrow used a high stick to bat down Trouba’s initial pass, but Goodrow said he never had a doubt he played the puck legally. The referees, after going to their headsets, agreed.
Goodrow now has four goals in 12 playoff games, the same total he had all regular season. Two have been game winners, one more than he had in the regular season.
Perhaps that shouldn’t come as a shock. Goodrow is a proven postseason player. He’s played in the OHL, AHL or NHL playoffs in every season since 2009-10, his first as a major junior player with the Brampton Battalion. In 2019, while with San Jose, he scored a Game 7 overtime winner to eliminate a formidable Vegas team. Tampa Bay acquired him the next season, and the center helped the Lightning win the Stanley Cup twice. Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper described him as a player who “does all the things that never end up on the front page of the paper.”
That contributed to the Rangers bringing him in on a six-year deal and naming him an alternate captain. Verhaeghe, Goodrow’s now-opponent with Florida, played with the center in Tampa Bay and lauded him as someone who brings energy, blocks shots and forechecks hard.
“He’s kind of just a perfect, smart player who does his job, comes to work every day,” he said earlier this season. “He’ll just do anything to help the team win.”
Trouba called him a massive part of the Rangers: someone whose leadership in the dressing room is invaluable, even if outsiders don’t see it.
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“Everybody knows what he brings to the team,” Trocheck said. “Every night he’s going to bring the same game. We just know that in different situations, he’s a guy you can count on defensively. You know he’s going to bring his best effort.”
Added Fox: “The beauty of our team is guys have roles and are able to do them really well, and what he does for us is really critical.”
Goodrow’s role, though, isn’t normally to score. That might have made Friday’s goal even sweeter.
“When you get a player that can do everything where a coach can rely on that person, that’s a pretty useful tool in the toolbox,” coach Peter Laviolette said. “When you see somebody who has so many other things that help the team to be successful, you’re really happy for a guy like that.”
The Rangers certainly were in the moments after Game 2. When Igor Shesterkin, who made 26 saves, saw the final play unfold, he waited until the referee signaled it was a goal to celebrate. Once he was certain, joy washed over him, and he rushed to join the mob around Goodrow.
Asked how happy he was to see his veteran teammate have a hockey hero’s moment following his up-and-down regular season, the goaltender had a quick retort.
“Maybe for you he’s up and down,” he said. “But for me, he’s always on top.”
(Photo: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
Peter Baugh is a staff writer for The Athletic NHL based in New York. He has previously been published in the Columbia Missourian, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Kansas City Star, Politico and the Washington Post. A St. Louis native, Peter graduated from the University of Missouri and previously covered the Missouri Tigers and the Colorado Avalanche for The Athletic. Follow Peter on Twitter @Peter_Baugh
