COLUMBUS, Ohio _ With both teams playing on the second night of a back-to-back, strange things figured to happen Saturday night when the Rangers visited the Blue Jackets. And some crazy hockey did, in fact, ensue.
The Rangers, for the second consecutive night, blew a two-goal lead, and for the second consecutive night went to overtime. But this time, they won, taking both points after a 5-4 shootout win with Jimmy Vesey netting the winning goal. Alexandar Georgiev, who started in goal, made 34 saves in regulation and overtime and three more in the shootout. Mika Zibanejad and Kevin Shattenkirk, who is 3-for-3 in the tiebreaker, scored the other shootout goals for the Rangers, who were without Mats Zuccarello, who is one of their normal three shooters.
The Rangers, who had a four-game winning streak when they embarked on this two-game trip, now have won five of six and have collected 11 of a possible 12 points (5-0-1) to improve to 8-7-2. They return home Monday to play their third game in four nights when they host the Vancouver Canucks at the Garden.
After giving up goals in the final minute of each of the last three games of their four-game swing through Chicago and California, the Rangers looked as though they'd finally figured out how to close out games when they protected leads in each of their two home games last week, beating Buffalo and Montreal. But whatever they'd appeared to learn about protecting leads at home, they seemed to forget on the road.
First-year coach David Quinn, who was angry after Friday's game, was much calmer Saturday and, as he has showed, over and over in the first month-plus of the season, he is one who likes to tinker with his lineup when he thinks something isn't quite right. So, and after a period of relative stability during the recent winning streak, Quinn was back to his line-juggling Saturday.
He benched Brendan Smith and reinserted rugged forward Cody McLeod, scratching rookie Vinni Lettieri, and moved 20-year-old rookie Lias Andersson on the second line, playing the right wing with center Kevin Hayes and left wing Chris Kreider. It was the first time Andersson, normally a center, had played right wing for the Rangers.
The Rangers got on the board early, with Zibanejad stealing a puck in the neutral zone to start a two-on-one with Pavel Buchnevich, then tapping in a feed from Buchnevich at the back post for his seventh goal of the season at 5:54. Cam Atkinson tied it for Columbus with a power play goal with 34 seconds left in the period, though.
The red-hot Buchnevich finished another two-on-one, banging in a pass from Jimmy Vesey at 6:57 of the second period, and Chris Kreider tapped in a no-look pass from Kevin Hayes at 8:30 to put the Rangers up, 3-1. But after blowing a 2-0 lead Friday against the Red Wings, the Rangers would do it again Saturday against Columbus. Pierre-Luc Dubois tipped in a right point shot from Seth Jones at 11:49 and the Blue Jackets scored again 32 seconds later, on a two-on-one goal by Nick Foligno.
Quinn called timeout after that, but Columbus scored a short-handed goal, by Alexander Wennberg at 16:03 of the period, to take their first lead.
But the Rangers fought back to tie the game on a goal by Vesey, who jammed in a feed from behind the net from Hayes at 19:07.
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