Rangers score seven straight to rally past Ottawa for 7-2 win Seven different skaters score for Rangers

In Ottawa, the New York Rangers took on the Senators on Saturday night, and fell behind 2-0 with the sens scoring in the first and second periods.What the Rangers have been unable to do, on a consistent basis, is  rally back or push back on a deficit.

On Saturday night, they scored five goals in the middle frame and tacked on two more late in the third for a 7-2 win.

“Tonight, with playing last night (against the Vegas Golden Knights), [facing] a rested team in their building, travel, short a few players, that’s a big win,” New York coach Peter Laviolette said.

Seven different skaters scored for the Rangers.

“I don’t think it’s a secret; I think we’ve been talking about it, we’ve been talking about the struggle, talking about trying to work through it,” the Rangers’ Mika Zibanejad (two assists) said. “You can talk all you want. I think we’ve played some good hockey, but just haven’t been there. We haven’t been able to execute and get ourselves that type of win. But we did that tonight, so that was huge for us.”

It also helped that Johnathan Quick was in net, he made 29 saves in the win.

“The efforts in the second games have been like they [were] tonight,” Laviolette said. “They’ve been on point. Their work ethic has been really good and we’ve been able to win in some tough situations.”

Ottawa took a 1-0 lead on a strike by Brady Tkachuk at 11:43 after an errant pass by K’Andre Miller of the Rangers was taken away by Ottawa’s Claude Giroux.

Jakob Chychrun pushed the lead to 2-0 with 84 seconds gone in the middle frame.

“After the first period, we weren’t great, but we were in the game,” Ottawa coach Jacques Martin said. “And then we got the second goal on the power play on a nice play. We had a pretty good situation, but the game is 60 minutes. I don’t think that we competed, especially the last 20 minutes. They were on the puck before us, they made plays and our level of competition wasn’t high enough.”

From there on out, it was all Rangers on the scoreboard.

Alexis Lafreniere started the rally at 5:51 of the second with a bank shot off the back of the Ottawa goalie for a 2-1 deficit for them them to climb out.

“We find ourselves down, started off [the second period], we get a penalty, they score on the power play and it’s 2-0 all of a sudden,” Zibanejad said. “You know, how it’s been going, it’s easy to just have the mindset of ‘Here we go again,’ but we got some big-time plays from guys, not just on the goals, but before that, and that got us going. We really wanted a win before the [NHL All-Star] break. We knew we had to fight for it and we did. Finally, some pucks went in.”

Chris Kreider hit off a breakaway down the left boards and scored at 8:33 to tie the game, 2-2.

The Rangers added three more to take a 5-2 lead into the third period.

Zac Jones  scored just ahead of the midway point of the second period off a pass from Artemi Panarin for a 3-2 lead.

“When that guy has the puck,” Jones said of Panarin, “you’ve just got to find the open ice and he’s going to find you.”

Jonny Brodzinski  pushed the lead to 4-2 at 11:16 off a tip in of a shot from Jones from the point.

“We need to learn from this,” Giroux said. “We need to know that when that happens, we need to react differently and get back on our toes and just play the way that we know works for us. We didn’t do that tonight.”

Blake Wheeler  scored off an odd man rush with Zibanejad  to give the Rangers a 5-2 advantage at 16:54.

Ottawa dropped to 18-25-2.

Panarin, who had two assist in the win, added an empty net goal at 17:17 to balloon the lead to 6-2.

“Obviously, we’ve been on a little bit of a slide here, and things haven’t really been going our way,” Jones said. “But it was nice to end the first half, quote, unquote, with a win there, and go into the break feeling good.”

Kaapo Kakko made it 7-2 to the Rangers at 17:52 when he potted the puck after a carom off the backboards from the right side to his position on the left post for the 8-7-2 final count on the scoreboard.

Use CodePHN15 Johnathan Quick earns PHN’s Chair of the Night for his 29 saves in backstopping the Rangers to a needed win

Joonas Korpisalo got the start for the Senators, he yielded four goals and made 13 saves before getting the hook ahead of the midway point of the middle frame.

Mads Sogaard made nine saves in a mop up role.

“It is frustrating because I think we gave them the win,” Martin said. “We’re in a good situation and you face a little bit of adversity, but you’ve got to build resistance to that, and, you know, be able to stick with it. It seems like we lost our composure, we lost our compete level.”