OTTAWA, Ontario — These were dire straits for the Rangers. If there was such a thing as a must-win game for an NHL team in November, this one, against the lowly Senators, was it for the Blueshirts, who’d lost their previous three games and who were facing a crisis of confidence of sorts.
And with his team in desperation mode, Rangers coach Gerard Gallant chose to start his backup goaltender, Jaroslav Halak, who had not recorded a win all season.
But it worked. Halak, starting after Igor Shesterkin had blamed himself for Monday’s loss to the Devils, made 35 saves and defenseman Ryan Lindgren had three assists as the Rangers beat the Senators, 3-1, at Canadian Tire Centre. The teams will face each other again on Friday at Madison Square Garden.
Jimmy Vesey, Barclay Goodrow and Chris Kreider scored the Rangers’ goals, and Lindgren recorded the first three-point game of his career as the Rangers improved to 11-9-4. Ottawa is 8-13-1.
Halak, the 37-year-old who signed with the Rangers as a free agent over the summer to replace the departed Alexandar Georgiev as Shesterkin’s backup, had last started Nov. 23 in the 2-1 loss in Anaheim at the end of the Rangers’ West Coast trip. He’d entered the game with a 3.20 goals-against average and an .881 save percentage, and had been 0-5-1. He’d had the misfortune of generally allowing one soft goal in each start.
But he didn’t give up a softie in this one. His best save came at 6:21 of the third period, with the Rangers clinging to a 2-1 lead, when he did the splits and stretched out his right pad to stop a backdoor shot by Parker Kelly.
Gallant made a couple of tweaks in the lineup after Monday’s loss to the Devils. First, he inserted Vitali Kravtsov for the first time since Nov. 10, and second, he split up the struggling Jacob Trouba-K’Andre Miller defense pair, putting Trouba with Zac Jones and Miller with Braden Schneider.
“Obviously, it's not going as well for (Miller-Trouba) right now,’’ Gallant said at the morning skate. “But they're still working. They're still playing hard. They're still competing every night. They're still good players.’’
The Rangers got on the board first when Vesey reached around Ottawa goalie Cam Talbot to capture the rebound of a Lindgren shot and tuck it in for his third goal of the season at 10:34 of the first period. That gave Halak a lead to work with, and despite looking scrambly, and unsteady, and uncertain at times, Halak stopped all 13 shots the Senators threw at him in the opening period to get the Rangers to the first intermission up 1-0.
The Rangers made it 2-0 when Goodrow was able to tip in another point shot by Lindgren at 10:52 of the second period. But the two-goal cushion didn’t last long.
Jones made an aggressive move to try and cut off a pass to Drake Batherson at the Rangers’ blue line, but didn’t get there, and Batherson chipped the puck back to Shane Pinto, sending him in on a two-on-one with Trouba back. Trouba cut off the passing lane and Pinto fired a quick shot off the rush for his ninth goal at 13:47 to make it 2-1.
Kreider made it 3-1 when he got the shaft of his stick on Lindgren’s shot from the left point, getting it by Talbot at 12:59 of the third period.
