Rangers see Stars after romp
STARS 5 RANGERS 3
Joe Pavelski scored powerplay goals 16 seconds apart, Stephen Johns and Blake Comeau helped chase Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist and the Dallas Stars beat New York 5-3 Monday night.
Johns and Comeau scored 4:04 apart in the second period and Corey Perry also scored for Dallas, which improved to 30-18-4 with its second straight win. Anton Khudobin stopped 33 of 36 shots.
Pavel Buchnevich and Brett Howden scored first period power-play goals for the Rangers, and Brendan Lemieux added another on a man-advantage in the third. New York had won two straight coming out of the All-Star break and a bye week as the front office weighs its options ahead of the Feb. 24 trade deadline.
“Every game is going to be key for us,” Brady Skjei said. “We have a lot of big games ahead.”
Johns played his fourth game since missing all of last season and the first 47 games of this one with posttraumatic headaches. He slammed a heavy slap shot 7:52 into the second period to break a 2-2 tie and give Dallas its second advantage of the game. Comeau followed with a snap shot from the left side at 11:56 to extend the lead to 4-2.
“I was open. I was calling for it,” said Johns, whose parents were at the game. “It makes it pretty special.”
Comeau's goal was the 14th in his career against Lundqvist, who was pulled after two periods having stopped 11 of 15 shots.
Buchnevich put New
York up 1-0 with his powerplay goal 2:29 into the game. Dallas has allowed the first goal in seven straight games.
Pavelski put Dallas ahead with two quick goals. He deflected John Klingberg's shot past Lundqvist at 8:08 for his first power-play goal, then connected again seconds later after Rangers coach David Quinn unsuccessfully challenged whether a shot from Tyler Seguin was out of play and was hit with a two-minute delay of game penalty.
Howden tied it with 4:19 left in the first. The goal was initially waved off after Bowden touched the puck with his hand, but a review showed he used his stick to knock the puck into the net and the call was overturned.
Alexandar Georgiev relieved Lundqvist and stopped 5 of 6 shots.
“We stopped playing for a bit and they took advantage,” Rangers forward Mika Zibanejad said. “We did some positive things but not enough.”