ICE PUNCH: Micheal Haley (left) and the Rangers had plenty of fight in them against Chris Phillips and the Senators last night, but the Blueshirts came up a bit short in a sluggish third period that saw their four-game win streak end in a 3-2 loss. (Paul J. Bereswell)
The Rangers, with little left in their tank last night, made one last push in the hope of continuing their winning streak. The puck came to the blade of Derek Stepan with just over 13 minutes remaining in a 2-2 game, wide open in front of the Senators’ net with a world of opportunity awaiting.
“He scores that,” said coach John Tortorella after the Rangers lost, 3-2, to the Senators at the Garden last night, “you never know where it goes.”
Instead of finding the back of the net, the puck found the butt end of Robin Lehner’s stick, the Senators’ goalie sending the puck up into the netting and the momentum back with his team. With the ice tilted, Jakob Silfverberg got the game winner with 4:41 remaining, lifting a rebound over Henrik Lundqvist’s right shoulder.
“It’s a goal scored with four and half minutes left,” said Lundqvist, who was terrific in making 36 saves. “Of course you’re going to be upset.”
The return of star center Brad Richards, who had missed the previous two games with neck and back issues, meant Stepan was switched to a second line between Marian Gaborik and Ryan Callahan, a group that finished with 10 combined shots.
Yet, none of them got past Lehner (33 saves), and even Stepan admitted the stop he made in the third could have changed the momentum.
“[I wanted to] shoot myself for it,” Stepan said. “Great pass from Gabby, and it just doesn’t seem to pop in.”
There were considerable energy swings throughout the tight and physical contest, attributable to the fact the Rangers (12-9-2) were on the second game of a back-to-back, trying to extend a four-game winning streak, while the Senators (13-8-4) were wrapping up a five-game road trip in which they had recorded just two points.
“We gave ourselves a good opportunity on a back-to-back, and we couldn’t get the job done,” said Rick Nash, who scored his ninth goal of the season in the first period — his first goal this year not to come in the third period. “We’re not going to use that as a crutch. We just have to dig down deeper, play better, and get the win.”
Nash was back on the wing with Richards as his center and Carl Hagelin on the left, and they picked up right where they left off before Richards was so brutally put into the boards by the Sabres’ Patrick Kaleta on Sunday. With under three minutes remaining in the first, Richards took a drop pass from Hagelin and netted a nice one-timer into the top corner, breaking a personal goalless streak of 15 games to tie it at 2-2.
“It was tough watching,” Richards said. “I’m just trying get back, get into the game, into the flow it again. It was a long week watching. I didn’t feel too bad.”
When the Senators opened the game with goals from Zach Smith and Patrick Wiercioch 10:50 in, it seemed as if the Rangers might be in for a long night. But Tortorella called a timeout, and 13 seconds after the Rangers regrouped, Nash netted his goal to cut the lead in half.
After that tying goal, the game stayed stagnant until the third, when the Rangers came out hard to start but hit their apex with Stepan’s try, watching after that as their energy seeped away, along with their winning streak.
“It’s a big save for them, but we kept coming after that,” said Callahan, whose team starts a four-game road trip tomorrow afternoon in Washington. “It was just a matter of gaining momentum and not turning the puck over. That’s just the way games go sometimes.”