OTTAWA — No matter how tall Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist looks standing on his head, from that position it’s impossible for him to score.
Lundqvist did everything in his power to keep the Rangers in it Thursday night against the Senators at ScotiaBank Place, but in the end it was his counterpart, Ben Bishop, who pitched a shutout in the Senators’ 3-0 win.
Lundqvist made save after save to keep his team in it, and as the third period ticked away, Ottawa up 1-0, the Rangers applied their first sustained pressure of the game and a tying goal seemed imminent. But that’s when Bishop made a jumping shoulder save on Ryan McDonagh, and coming the other way Guillaume Latendresse netted a mid-height wrister to make it 2-0 with under eight minutes to go. After the punchless Rangers power play went 0-for-4 — with very few scoring chances — Colin Greening put one into the empty net to seal it.
The eighth-place Rangers (16-14-5 came into the game carrying some good vibes, despite the fact they were 3-4-1 in the previous eight games. On Tuesday in Philadephia, they wiped out the Flyers 5-2, and even seemed to put their scoring woes and slow starts behind them.
Instead, it was the Senators (19-9-6) carrying most of the momentum through the first two periods. The only thing that kept the Rangers in it was Lundqvist, who made a handful of memorable stops.
With a little more than six minutes gone by in the second, Lundqvist came flying out of his net on a Jim O’Brien breakaway, and dove on his stomach to poke check the puck away. Just five minutes later, O’Brien had an open 2-on-1 rush and passed it to Erik Condra, who was denied by Lundqvist’s right pad, flying laterally for a jaw-dropping stop.
Yet with 48.8 seconds remaining in the period, the Senators were on the power play after an Anton Stralman trip and found a way to convert. With Ryan Callahan skating around with a broken stick, the puck ended up on the blade of Ottawa defenseman Andre Benoit, and he tore one through traffic to make it 1-0.
After the Rangers played a dominant first half of the game in Philadelphia on Tuesday — where they scored the first three goals — the best chance they got in the first period was a wrister from fourth-liner Kris Newbury, midway through.
The opening frame ended with the Rangers outshot 9-4, scoreless only by some impressive stops from Lundqvist. The first was 30 seconds into the game, when Mike Hoffman had the puck roll to him wide open in the slot and Lundqvist shut the door. With 4:18 remaining, Eric Gryba got another open look from the right circle, but Lundqvist made an impressive glove save.
bcyrgalis@nypost.com