Alexis Lafreniere saves Rangers in shootout win over Blue Jackets

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The Rangers haven’t lost a lot of games lately, but they continue to lose personnel. 

Alexis Lafreniere scored three times in the Blueshirts’ 4-3 shootout win over the Blue Jackets, including the game-tying goal with 11 seconds left in regulation and the game-winner in the skills competition, to pick up the team’s third straight victory in a game that went sour when Ryan Lindgren departed in the third period with an undisclosed injury. 

“Upper-body right now,” head coach Peter Laviolette said vaguely of Lindgren’s injury. 

Lindgren exited early in the third period after getting slammed headfirst into the boards in the corner by Columbus forward Sean Kuraly. The 25-year-old defenseman stayed down on the ice for some time and was slow to get up before he made his way to the locker room, where he remained for the rest of the game. 

Nick Bonino took exception to the hit and immediately went after Kuraly, who was originally issued a major boarding penalty before it was reduced to a two-minute minor. 

“I thought they had the right call originally,” Laviolette said. “There was something going on through the course of the game between both of those guys and his elbow clearly took him in the head.” 

Despite Jonathan Quick’s quick — pun intended — return from an upper-body injury on Sunday, the Rangers are already without No. 1 defenseman Adam Fox and second-line center Filip Chytil. 

In addition to having Fox on long-term injured reserve and Chytil on injured reserve, star goalie Igor Shesterkin has been unavailable the last four games due to what the team has called minor soreness. 

While the Rangers have held their own amid this rare flurry of injuries, Lindgren always seems to take a big piece of the club’s defense with him when he’s out of the lineup. The Minnesota native missed one game earlier this season with an upper-body injury. 

The officiating did not swing in the Rangers’ favor between the reduced penalty on Kuraly and a no-goal call on a sequence that could’ve gone either way just before Lindgren’s injury. 

Will Cuylle nearly evened the score for a third time toward the end of the middle frame, when his tough-angled shot got wedged between Columbus goalie Elvis Merzlikins and the post. The rookie pointed at the net to signal that he thought it was in, but after a lengthy review, it was decided the puck had not crossed the line on the initial shot. 

The Garden crowd let the referees know what they thought of the call so loudly that they could’ve been heard in the control room in Toronto. 

“I thought in the third period our guys just kept pushing, we found ourselves down,” Laviolette said. “The game hadn’t gone the way you might want it to go. Guys got on the attack and kept pushing. Came down the last few seconds, we were able to tie it up and get it into overtime and then a shootout.” 

The good news for the Rangers is that their next game isn’t until Saturday. 

The bad news is that it’s against the Devils. 

Facing the team that knocked them out of the playoffs last season without potentially four key players will be no small task. 

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