NHL

Garrison, Versteeg send Panthers past Rangers, 2-1

SUNRISE, Fla. — Jason Garrison and Kris Versteeg scored and Jose Theodore stopped 19 shots to lead the Florida Panthers to their third straight win, a 2-1 victory over the New York Rangers on Wednesday night.

Derek Stepan scored his fourth goal for New York, which lost a second straight game following a seven-game winning streak. Henrik Lundqvist made 36 saves.

Tomas Fleischmann had two assists for the Panthers, who have won four of five and are 6-2-3 in their last 11 games.

Stepan’s goal at 4:18 of the second pulled New York within 2-1. Marian Gaborik skated into the Florida zone on the right side and sent a cross-ice pass to Stepan, who fired a shot that beat Theodore high stick side.

Florida went ahead 2-0 when Versteeg scored his 12th goal at 1:09 of the second.

Fleischmann made a nifty move to get around Artem Anisimov to Lundqvist’s left, and then back-handed a pass to Versteeg, who one-timed the puck into the net.

Versteeg, who scored twice in Florida’s 4-3 win over New Jersey on Monday night, has seven goals and six assists over his last 13 games.

Florida opened the scoring when Garrison fired a slap shot from straight on that got past Lundqvist for a power-play goal at 10:06 of the first period. It was Garrison’s eighth goal. He entered the game leading the league in goals by a defenseman.

The Rangers successfully killed a 5-minute Florida power play after Andre Deveaux was given a match penalty for an intentional hit to the head on Fleischmann near center ice at 10:59 of the second.

New York’s power-play unit was 0 for 4 and fell to 9-74 overall (12.2 percent) and 3-40 (7.5 percent) on the road.

Notes: Florida has its first three-game home winning streak since Jan. 11-15. … The Panthers are 3-0 on their current four-game homestand after dropping five of seven there to start the season. … With D Jeff Woywitka scratched, D Anton Stralman made his Rangers debut. He was signed as a free agent Nov. 5. … New York fell to 4-1-3 in one-goal games. … Florida is 6-1-1 when leading after the first period.