NEW YORK _ If the Rangers felt awful about blowing a three-goal lead Friday night in their overtime loss to Arizona, at least they had solace in knowing that their opponents Sunday afternoon, the Vegas Golden Knights, did the same thing Friday, coughing up a three-goal lead in losing to the New Jersey Devils.
"We're facing a team that did the same exact thing we did _ they blew a three-goal lead," Rangers coach David Quinn said before the game. "So, we're going to find out which team is mentally tougher and can overcome what happened to us in the previous game."
Vegas won the battle, with Alex Tuch scoring the winner at 2:11 of overtime to give the Golden Knights a 4-3 win. The Rangers were able to earn a point by reaching overtime only because Henrik Lundqvist was magnificent in making 37 saves, many of them spectacular.
Playing without winger Jesper Fast, who the team announced before the game will miss 2-4 weeks with an upper-body injury, the Rangers at least got a boost when Kevin Hayes, who crashed heavily into the boards near the end of Friday's game, was able to play. Hayes ended up with three assists, giving him 200 points in his NHL career.
Brady Skjei put the Rangers on top 1:13 into the game when he finished a pretty two-on-one feed from Pavel Buchnevich, playing his second game since his return from a broken thumb. But Reilly Smith, the brother of Rangers defenseman Brendan Smith, scored to tie the score at 1 at 11:40. Paul Stastny, playing his second game since returning from a 29-game absence because of a knee injury, scored his first goal of the season at 6:09 of the second period to put Vegas up 2-1, but it could have been much, much worse for the Rangers had not Lundqvist been in remarkable form. Lundqvist kept making impossible, unbelievable saves, one after the other, until Mika Zibanejad tied the game with a power-play goal at 12:10 of the period.
William Carrier's goal just 1:02 later put the Golden Knights back in front, but Chris Kreider's 15th goal, a slap shot off the rush down the left wing, tied it at 3 at 3:29 of the third.
