NEW YORK — Alexandar Georgiev made the save on Pavel Zacha and Chris Kreider scored on a backhand against substitute goalie Jonathan Bernier as the Rangers beat the Devils, 4-3 in a seven-round shootout Sunday at Madison Square Garden for their third straight win.
The game featured the first goal of the season by Kaapo Kakko, who added an assist and scored in the shootout, and a fine performance by Georgiev, who started in place of No. 1 goalie Igor Shesterkin, and made 24 saves to earn his second victory of the season.
Kakko’s goal at 6:29 of the third had given the Rangers a 3-2 lead, but Zacha scored at 17:16 of the third to tie it, 3-3, and force overtime.
The victory, their third in a row, gave the Rangers (9-3-3) a sweep of their weekend back-to-back over the Devils and Columbus Blue Jackets, whom they’d beaten in Columbus Saturday.
Rangers coach Gerard Gallant said before the game that Shesterkin was OK and could have played, but the coach opted to start Georgiev, who’d started only three of the first 14 games. Georgiev made 24 saves, the biggest being the right pad save he made on Jesper Bratt with 3:05 left in overtime.
All was not perfect for the Rangers, however. With third-line center Filip Chytil already on injured reserve, the Blueshirts lost forward Sammy Blais to an apparent right knee injury. Blais left 1:02 into the third after he and the Devils’ P.K. Subban went to the corner boards for a puck and Subban’s skate appeared to clip Blais’ skate. Blais’ right knee appeared to bend awkwardly as it went into the boards and he was helped off the ice, putting no pressure on his right leg.
After seeing the replay, the Garden crowd started a chant of "Subban [stinks].’’ It was the second time Subban had apparently injured a Rangers player with a skate-to-skate incident. In the preseason, he looked to slew-foot Ryan Reaves, who was injured and forced to leave that game. Subban was twice fined for slew-foot incidents since the regular season started.
Kakko, the third-year forward from Finland, got his first point of the season, a secondary assist, on Alexis Lafreniere’s second-period goal that had given the Rangers a 2-1 lead at the time.
After the Devils had tied the score on Dougie Hamilton’s power-play goal midway through the second period, Kakko scored on a drive to the net at 6:29 of the third period. He passed to Strome in the slot, and Strome passed it back to him, and Kakko drove the net against Devils goalie Mackenzie Blackwood, cut across to his forehand and tucked it in behind Blackwood to give the Rangers a 3-2 lead.
Bratt got behind the Ranger defense on a breakaway, and scored the game’s first goal at 15:23 of the first period, but Adam Fox tied the score 1-1 with his fourth goal of the season, at 3:11 of the second period. Fox picked off an attempted clearing pass by the Devils’ Damon Severson in the slot, cut to his backhand, and roofed the puck over Blackwood, who had shut out the Islanders in his last start. Fox’s goal snapped Blackwood’s shutout streak at 121 minutes, 42 seconds.
Lafreniere gave the Rangers the lead when he whacked in a rebound at 11:24 of the second period, four seconds after a power play expired, for his fourth goal, and his first in seven games.
But the Devils got a power play when Ryan Lindgren was called for interference on Nico Hischier after a net-front battle. Lindgren didn’t like the call, but it stood, and Hamilton scored 18 seconds into the power play.
