Senators thump Rangers, 6-2 Rangers sloppy play costs them

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In Ottawa, the Senators scored early and often in a 6-2 win over the visiting New York Rangers on Tuesday night.

Brady Tkachuk hit for a double in the win

Anton Forsberg made 33 saves in the win.

“It’s nice to be on a roll here,” said Forsberg. “I feel comfortable in my own game and I think the team is playing great. We’re creating a lot more and playing for each other, so it’s really fun out there right now.”

The Senators moved to 10-10-0.

Ottawa jumped to a 2-0 lead in the first period on goals from Tkachuk and Claude Giroux.

“They’re a fast team,” the Rangers’ Mika Zibanejad said of the Senators. “They play fast and they took advantage of our, at times, sloppy play.”

Artemi Panarin and K’Andre Miller were the Rangers strikers. Both goals came in the second period.

After Panarin cut the deficit to 2-1 in the middle frame, Vladimir Tarasenko  scored to push the lead back to two at 3-1.

“It was great for ‘Vlady’ to score and score a highlight goal like that,” Ottawa coach D.J. Smith said. “It’s going to give him some confidence, and then he gets a second one. If you can get your top six rolling like that, you’re going to win some games.”

The Rangers dropped to 18-5-1.

“There’s things we did that didn’t give ourselves the best chance at being successful,” New York coach Peter Laviolette said. “I think that they’re easy things to fix, but the second period was a track meet. I mean, it went up and down the ice at 100 miles an hour. One way going 100 is fine, but the other way, we have to have better reads and better decisions coming out of offensive zone play.”

Miller trimmed the deficit to 3-2, but the Senators posted two more goals in the middle frame to take a 5-2 lead into the third period.

Drake Batherson scored at 7:16 to make it 4-2, and Tkachuk hit his double at 17:43 for the 5-2 lead.

“I think the changes that we’ve made over the last couple games are starting to show,” Tkachuk said. “Breakouts, neutral zone [play] and stuff like that, just little details to our game. So, I like where we’re heading and we just keep improving every single day.”

Tarasenko scored his double into an empty net with just under three minutes left on the game clock for the 6-2 final.

“Right now, that’s the best team in the NHL,” Smith said of the Rangers. “We held on to a lot of pucks. I think we did some really good things defensively, as well. And I think it was really good for our penalty kill to kill that 5-on-3 and get a bit of confidence. … I think that’s nine good periods in a row for us, and we’re starting to have a little bit of consistency.”

Igor Shesterkin made 30 saves in the loss.

“Just kind of turn the page,” Rangers captain Jacob Trouba said. “We lost the game. Obviously, we didn’t like how we played. You’re going to have some games like that. I think, get some rest, and get ready to play the next one.”