A night after blowing a two-goal lead and seeing their four-game win streak snapped, the New York Rangers were back at it Saturday night in Columbus where they faced the Blue Jackets.
The Rangers blew another two-goal lead, this tie in the second period but rebounded for a 5-4 win in the skills competition.
Jimmy Vesey, who potted a game-tying goal with less than a minute on the clock in the middle frame, was credited with the deciding goal in the fifth round of the skills.
“It was demoralizing giving up three in row,” Kevin Hayes (two assists) said. “[Vesey] played well tonight. He got us going.”
Alexandar Georgiev made 34 saves to get the win as the Rangers are now 5-0-1 in their last six games.
“We kind of left him out to dry tonight,” Rangers forward Kevin Hayes said. “We got hemmed in a bunch throughout the game. That’s not what you want to do. Sometimes your goalie has to bail you out and that’s what he did.”
Georgiev stopped three of five shooters in the skills portion of the game.
“I’m pretty emotionless but also pretty confident in shootouts because the guys are so skilled. They did a great job scoring three goals,” Georgiev said.
Pavel Buchnevich, Mika Zibanejad and Chris Kreider also scored for the Rangers who improved to 8-7-2.
“You’re going to make mistakes. That’s going to happen,” Rangers coach David Quinn said. “It’s how you react to it and recover from it. That’s the key. That’s what we’re trying to do as a group.”
Pierre-Luc Dubois; Cam Atkinson, Nick Foligno, and Alexander Wennbergscored for the Blue Jackets.
“We put in a ton of good minutes tonight. We’re going to keep on working,” Blue Jackets coach John Tortorella said. “We gave up some early odd-man rushes that cost us. That’s our biggest weakness now, the stuff we give up for free.”
Seth Jones had three assists in the losing effort.
“We had stretches of good minutes, stretches of not-so-good minutes,” Jones said. “For the most part we played a well-checked game. When they went up 3-1, we responded well.”
[WATCH: All Rangers vs. Blue Jackets highlights]
Joonas Korpisalo made 15 saves in the loss and broke his stick over the cross bar after Vesey’s skills winner.
“If you look at their goals it’s kind of what we gave them, not what they did, which is disappointing a little bit,” Foligno said.
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