An old friend came home to Madison Square Garden on Tuesday night to embarrass the New York Rangers. 
Alexandar Georgiev made 44 saves in a 3-2 win for the Colorado Avalanche after the skills competition.
“Pretty special,” Georgiev said. “Doesn’t get much better than that type of shootout win, and the building … the building is awesome. It brought (back) a lot of good memories. But for me, it was just playing the game and letting it come to me.”
Valeri Nichushkin and Logan O’Connor scored for the Avs in regulation.
“I feel like I knew ‘Georgie’ was going to have a game tonight,” Avalanche defenseman Cale Makar said. “Just obviously [playing against his] old team, they traded him here, so I don’t know if there’s any hard feelings and stuff like that. But we know him, he’s a good goalie, but I feel like he was on a completely different planet tonight. So, whatever he did to channel that tonight, hopefully he can do continue to do that for us.”
The Rangers chased the game most of the night, falling behind, 1-0 and 2-1.
“I thought our penalty kill was really good tonight, which is nice for to see our guys get rewarded,” Avalanche coach Jared Bednar said. ” … They created a few chances, and when we needed a save, Georgie was there. But overall, a good night from our penalty kill, and they get a big short-handed goal for us, which was huge.”
Barclay Goodrow scored for New York to tie the game, 1-1, in the middle frame.
“Obviously you’d like to get the (extra) point, but we definitely played a lot better tonight than we have in the last couple of games (3-2 overtime loss to the San Jose Sharks on Thursday; 5-1 loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets on Sunday), so maybe see it as a starting point for something to catapult us through tomorrow (at the New York Islanders) and the next little stretch here,” Goodrow said.
Adam Fox scored in the third period to tie the game, 2-2, and force the extra session that solved nothing.
“He’s a talented player,” Rangers coach Gerard Gallant said of Fox. “He’s up the ice. Him and Makar looked pretty good going back and forth with each other with two real good players.”
Evan Rodrigues was credited with the deciding goal in the skills competition.
Igor Shesterkin made 42 saves in the Rangers loss.
“You definitely want to help the team to win to get the two points, but it was obviously just a bad shootout, and the second goal was completely on me,” Shesterkin said.
You must be logged in to post a comment.