What a difference a day made – or nearly made -- for the Rangers. One night after laying an egg in their season opener in Washington, the Blueshirts were back in action Thursday in their home opener at Madison Square Garden and they looked like a totally different team.
It didn’t translate into a win, but at least they earned their first point of the season, securing that when they rallied from a two-goal deficit to force overtime before Miro Heiskanen ended it with his first goal of the season at 1:38 of overtime to give Dallas a 3-2 victory.
The Rangers will go back on the road when they play in Montreal Saturday against the Canadiens. That is the start of a four-game trip that will take them to Toronto on Monday, Nashville Thursday and Ottawa next Saturday.
The Rangers, playing against a rested Stars team, started off a little sluggish and managed only four shots on goal in the first period (Dallas had eight). And they fell behind, 1-0, with 34.1 seconds remaining in the period when Dallas rookie Jacob Peterson beat Igor Shesterkin on a two-on-one break for his first NHL goal. It was the second consecutive night a rookie playing in his first NHL game had scored against the Rangers. Washington’s Hendrix Lapierre did it Wednesday.
The Stars made it 2-0 on a power-play goal by Radek Faksa at 6:11 of the second period with Ryan Reaves serving a boarding penalty. Heiskanen’s shot hit the shaft of Adam Fox’s stick and deflected toward the goalpost, and as Shesterkin moved to play the shot he was caught out of position as Faksa collected the loose puck and scored.
But after that, the Rangers started to pick things up, and things turned around. Fox, who was magnificent, took a pass from his defense partner, Ryan Lindgren, down in the lower part of the left wing circle, curled his way up the boards and out to the blue line and flipped a wrist shot through traffic that hit the shin pad of Dallas defenseman Esa Lindell and got by Braden Holtby at 8:43. Lindell was battling with Kaapo Kakko in front of the net.
That goal gave the Rangers life and it was as if a switch had been turned on. The Rangers started putting intense pressure on Holtby and eventually, at 15:54, Chris Kreider tied it 2-2 when he tipped in a shot from the left point by K’Andre Miller. It was the second goal of the season for Kreider, who scored the Rangers’ only goal Wednesday in the 5-1 loss to Washington.
Holtby, who stopped 23 of 25 shots he faced, left the game midway in the third period, returning to the locker room for an undisclosed issue. He was replaced in goal by Anton Khudobin.
Khudobin, coming in cold, made six saves in his 13:02 of ice time, many of them excellent, and none better than the one he made on Kreider from the doorstep while the Rangers were on the power play. In fact, five of the shots Khudobin faced came on that power play, which the Rangers were awarded when Joe Pavelski was sent off for cross-checking at 13:22.
Shesterkin, starting a night after Alexandar Georgiev started the season opener in Washington, saved 23 of 26 shots.
