the lack of punishment for Wilson

NEW YORK (AP) With each passing game Authentic Aaron Donald Jersey , it appears the New York Rangers may have found an apprentice goalie for next season.Jimmy Vesey had two goals and an assist to support Alexandar Georgiev’s season-high 43-save performance and the Rangers beat the Buffalo Sabres 5-1 Saturday night.Chris Kreider, Mika Zibanejad and Neal Pionk each added a goal and an assist as the Rangers completed a sweep of the three-game season series and improved to 13-3-0 in the last 16 meetings with the Sabres.”The main thing is that we won the game,” said the 22-year-old Georgiev, who has been impressive since his recall from AHL Hartford last month after backup Ondrej Pavelec was injured. ”We scored great goals in the first period, played really good defense. The guys were really battling to not let them have many good opportunities to score.”Sam Reinhart spoiled Georgiev’s shutout bid with 4 1/2 minutes remaining for the Sabres, who have lost four straight. Robin Lehner gave up four goals on 12 shots before being replaced near the midpoint of the second period. Linus Ullmark came on and stopped 10 of the 11 shots he faced.Kreider and Vesey each scored in the first before Pionk got his first NHL goal early in the second.”It’s hard to believe it at first. It’s just such a great feeling when those guys come get you and they all give you a huge hug,” Pionk said. ”Something I will never forget.”Zibanejad made it 4-0 with his team-leading 27th at 8:45 of the second, giving the Rangers goals on four consecutive shots for the first time since Jan. 3, 2015, also against the Sabres, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.Georgiev, starting for fifth time in six games, made 21 saves in the first period, nine in the second and 13 more in the third. He has four wins overall and could emerge as Henrik Lundqvist’s backup next season.”I’m just trying to play my game and help the guys in every way I can,” he said.The Sabres outshot the Rangers 21-10 in the first period but it was Kreider opening the scoring with 3:31 left with his 15th of the season with assists to linemates Zibanejad and Jesper Fast. The line has totaled 25 points in last five games.Zibanejad has 12 points in his last seven games including eight goals. Kreider has a five-game points streak with three goals and seven assists. Fast has an eight-game point streak with three goals and seven assists over the span.Vesey made it 2-0 with just under two minutes remaining. Mats Zuccarello had an assist for his team-leading 50th point.Pionk scored his milestone goal at 3:59 of the middle period, extending his points streak to seven games. He has a goal and nine assists during the stretch. The 22-year-old defenseman was recalled from Hartford of the AHL last month and has 14 points overall.Vesey’s 17th made it 5-0 with 5:13 left in the second.”We lost coverages, guys were beating us up the ice, and I think it goes back to have that respect in our own zone and for our goaltender,” Sabres coach Phil Housley said ”We have to keep the puck out of our net.”The Rangers are 6-4-3 since dealing Rick Nash to Boston Aaron Donald Jersey Elite , and captain Ryan McDonagh and J.T. Miller to Tampa Bay as part of a promised purge of top players at the trade deadline. Though they will miss the playoffs for the first time since 2010, they have played with renewed energy since the deals were made.”We had some grade-A chances that we were able to capitalize on and we got a lead,” Rangers coach Alain Vigneault said. ”For the most part, we had some good looks and our goaltender was able to make some big saves.”NOTES: The Rangers also defeated Buffalo 3-2 in overtime in the Winter Classic at Citi Field – which was considered a home game for the Sabres – on New Year’s Day, and won 4-3 at Madison Square Garden on Jan. 18. … The Rangers again scratched Lundqvist after he was shaken up in a collision last Tuesday against Columbus. … The Rangers also scratched F David Desharnais. … Buffalo scratched F Jacob Josefson, F Justin Bailey, D Justin Falk and D Nathan Beaulieu.UP NEXTRangers: Host Washington on Monday.Sabres: Visit Toronto on Monday. Drew Doughty watched other playoff games this season and couldn’t believe that George Parros, the NHL’s discipline czar, had suspended him for a head shot.”I saw four hits last night that deserved more than that,” the Los Angeles Kings defenseman said.Doughty’s one-game suspension was the first of several in the first round for a hit to the head of an opponent. Toronto’s Nazem Kadri got three games and Winnipeg’s Josh Morrissey and Nashville’s Ryan Hartman got one game each. Washington’s Tom Wilson and Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov were among those who got off without significant punishment.The criticism, from Columbus to Colorado and from New Jersey to Los Angeles, was loud enough that the NHL’s department of player safety put out a video last week explaining its reasoning for suspending Doughty and Hartman but not Kucherov or Predators center Ryan Johansen.”The illegal check to the head rule is often misunderstood or misstated,” the league said in the video. ”Illegal checks to the head and legal full body hits often look similar at first glance because the difference between legal and illegal can be a matter of inches in a sport that moves fast.”Discontent over the goalie interference rule has been grabbing headlines for weeks, but the head shot discussion carries far more serious implications for a league still grappling with how best to protect its players. What’s acceptable has evolved from the early days of hockey through Scott Stevens’ then-legal crushing blow on Eric Lindros in 2000 to today, where checks to the head are parsed frame-by-frame to determine if a line was crossed. The NHL, too, is still facing a federal class-action concussion lawsuit filed by former players alleging it failed to warn them about the health risks associated with head injuries.Meeting with Associated Press Sports Editors last week, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman insisted there was nothing new about the subject. Asked about player safety, Bettman said Parros is off to good start in the former enforcer’s first season as vice president of player safety. He said he is proud of player safety’s transparency in the form of videos detailing the reasons for suspending a player.”Sometimes we get accused of splitting hairs http://www.losangelesramsteamonline.com/aaron-donald-jersey , but that’s exactly what they have to do,” Bettman said. ”I think he’s reached the appropriate conclusion when it’s been a hockey play that doesn’t transcend the rules and I think he’s been appropriately punitive in cases where it warranted it. There’s never going to be a shortage of critics of what they do.”Doughty, a finalist for the Norris Trophy as the league’s top defenseman, said he hit Vegas forward William Carrier’s shoulder first before his head in Game 1. Kings coach John Stevens added: ”As long as I’m on the earth, I’m going to agree to disagree with that decision.”The league video emphasized that an illegal check to the head concerns a player’s head being the main point of contact, not the first point of contact. Based on experience, the league said, a player’s head snapping back on these kinds of hits indicates significant head contact.Los Angeles general manager Rob Blake, who worked under Brendan Shanahan in the department of player safety from 2010-2013, said it’s a tough job while at the same time reiterating the organization was unhappy with the suspension of Doughty. Columbus GM Jarmo Kekalainen was upset forward Josh Anderson was ejected from Game 1 against Washington for boarding Michal Kempny and called a hit to the head of Alexander Wennberg from Washington’s Tom Wilson that got only a minor penalty ”dangerous.”Wilson was not given a hearing or suspended. Wennberg missed Games 2, 3 and 4 and the hit was not included in the NHL’s explanation video.Columbus coach John Tortorella didn’t want to weigh in on the lack of punishment for Wilson, a common refrain across the NHL because nothing can be done after the fact. For a more specific reason, Bettman doesn’t weigh in on suspensions because any appeals go to him. He does look at suspension videos before they are issued.”I watch as a fan to make sure they make sense,” Bettman said. ”I want to make sure the videos we send out are clear.””I think player safety as a whole has done an extraordinarily good job of changing the culture,” Bettman said.” We have players not making certain types of hits anymore. We have players who are more accountable for their conduct and understand it and I believe that they’ve been consistent.”—AP Sports Writer Teresa M. Walker in Nashville, Tennessee, and Sports Deputy Editor for Newsgathering Howie Rumberg in New York contributed.