NEW YORK — After they had rallied from two goals down on Tuesday to beat the Minnesota Wild at Madison Square Garden, the Rangers had every reason to believe that a one-goal deficit at home Thursday to the Central Division-leading Dallas Stars was not insurmountable.
And they were right.
K’Andre Miller’s buzzer-beater, a desperation shot through traffic that came off a rebound after his initial shot was blocked, got through a maze of bodies and got past goalie Jake Oettinger with less than a second left to tie it. Adam Fox won it in overtime after he took a pass from Artemi Panarin and shoveled a backhander past Oettinger 1:16 into the overtime to give the Rangers a 2-1 victory.
Igor Shesterkin made 24 saves for the Rangers, who have won five of six and are 13-2-2 since their Dec. 5 loss to Chicago. Oettinger finished with 29 saves.
Without Chris Kreider, the Rangers’ power play went scoreless in four opportunities, while Dallas had converted its only opportunity in the second period, by Tyler Seguin, to carry a lead into the third period.
When Miller’s goal went in, the Garden erupted, but the green light was on behind the goal, indicating time had run out. After checking the replay, the puck appeared to cross the goal line with .7 seconds left and the goal was good.
Not a lot happened in the first period, other than the massive collision between Julien Gauthier and Sammy Blais that forced Gauthier out of the game. The puck was in the Stars’ zone and Gauthier was skating out as Blais skated into it. The two players collided, chest-to-chest, at the outside edge of the right circle and both went down heavily and stayed down.
After a moment, Blais was the first to get up, and he skated, hunched over, off the ice, with 1:20 remaining in the period. Gauthier remained down on the ice for several moments, eventually getting up on one knee as he was attended to by Rangers’ athletic trainer Jim Ramsay. Then, after several minutes, he got to his feet, slowly, and slowly skated off toward the dressing room.
The Rangers finished the period with only 10 forwards and when they initially came onto the ice for the second period, neither Blais nor Gauthier was with them. But Blais joined them late, just before the puck was dropped to start the period. The Rangers then sent word that Gauthier, suffering an upper-body injury, would not return.
So the Rangers carried on with only 11 forwards. Both teams tightened up their play in the second period, cutting down on their turnovers. The Rangers, after having been charged with 10 giveaways in the first period, were charged with only three in the second, while Dallas cut their giveaways from five in the first to three in the second.
But the game opened up in that the Rangers got three power plays in the period. Without Kreider, Alexis Lafreniere, who took Kreider’s spot on the top line, with Mika Zibanejad and Kaapo Kakko, also took Kreider’s spot in the net front position on the power play. But the power play could not produce a goal in the period. Then, when Ryan Lindgren broke his stick across the back of Seguin and was given a roughing penalty, the Stars got their only power play of the period, and Seguin scored at 17:53, to give the visitors the lead.
The goal came on a wide open shot from the slot that resulted from a botched change by Barclay Goodrow. The Rangers had cleared the puck out of the zone, but not all the way down the ice, and Goodrow decided to try and get a quick change. As he headed to the bench, Zibanejad jumped onto the ice to take his place. But as Dallas’ Mason Marchment skated with the puck near the Ranger bench, Goodrow went to challenge him, and Zibanejad turned and jumped back over the boards.
When Marchment skated by Goodrow, Goodrow decided to complete the change, which left Zibanejad well behind the play when he finally got on the ice. Marchment passed the puck across ice to Denis Gurianov and drove to the net. He partially whiffed on a one-timer of Gurianov’s pass, but the puck went to Seguin, who was wide open with Zibanejad hopelessly behind.
