Erik Karlsson scored the lone goal of the shootout in the fifth round and the Ottawa Senators snapped the New York Rangers’ season-best, five-game winning streak with a 2-1 victory on Thursday night.
Craig Anderson and Rangers counterpart Henrik Lundqvist both made 29 saves through overtime and both denied the first four shooters in the tiebreaker. Anderson got some help in the fifth round when Ryan Callahan got off a weak shot because his stick broke on the attempt.
Karlsson then solved Lundqvist to win it.
The game mattered much more to the Rangers, the seventh-place team in the Eastern Conference. New York closed within two points of sixth-place Montreal, which lost at Boston, with seven games left. The Senators are last in the East.
Ryan Shannon had given Ottawa a 1-0 lead in the second, but Brandon Prust tied it early in the third.
A big scrum in the Senators’ crease with 1:40 left in regulation led to two minor penalties for each team that didn’t affect on-ice manpower. However, Ottawa forward Chris Neil was whistled for holding with 25.7 seconds left to give the Rangers a power play for much of the first 2 minutes of overtime.
Anderson kicked out Marc Staal’s shot just as Neil’s penalty expired, and a lead pass sent Neil in alone on Lundqvist, who pokechecked the rolling puck off his stick.
Prust got the Rangers even at 1 at 2:45 of the second period during a delayed-penalty call. Staal, who missed the previous two games because of an undisclosed injury, raced the puck up the middle but was cut down at center ice by a sliding tackle from defenseman Chris Phillips. Staal got a pass off while on the ice to Prust, who glided into the right circle and snapped in his 12th goal.
The Rangers showed more life throughout the third period and generated chances that Anderson handled. New York killed Ryan McDonagh’s holding penalty just past the midpoint of the period.
Shannon broke the scoreless deadlock with 4:39 left in the second when he converted off a circle-to-circle pass from Bobby Butler and beat Lundqvist from the right for his 10th goal this season and fourth in five games. It came just 21 seconds after Ottawa’s first power play ended.
That marked the first time the Rangers were short-handed in two games after they earned a penalty-free, 1-0 victory over the Florida Panthers on Tuesday. New York had only one power play in that game and was given only one through 40 minutes against Ottawa.
Notes: Shannon had scored only two goals in 34 games before this recent spurt. … Senators D Sergei Gonchar missed his second game because of a concussion. … Rangers D Matt Gilroy sat out to make room for Staal. LW Sean Avery was a healthy scratch for the fourth straight game and for the fifth time in six. … The Rangers agreed to terms with free agent Jason Missiaen, a 20-year-old goalie who is 6-foot-8. He went 10-33-8 this season with a 3.33 goals-against average and .893 save percentage in 53 games with Baie-Comeau Drakkar of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.