Pionk's end-to-end goal helps Rangers rally past Canadiens

NEW YORK -- Neal Pionk scored the tiebreaking goal on an end-to-end rush late in the third period, and the New York Rangers extended their season-long winning streak to four games in a 5-3 victory against the Montreal Canadiens at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday.

Pionk scored in a 4-on-4 sequence at 17:16 to give the Rangers a 4-3 lead.
He started the play behind the Rangers net, came out with the puck, made a spin move to get away from Canadiens forward Jonathan Drouin, took the puck down the left-wing wall, cut inside defenseman Noah Juulsen and tucked it past goalie Carey Price.
WATCH: [All Canadiens vs. Rangers highlights]
"Honestly, I compare it to a quarterback doing check downs," Pionk said of his goal. "So, when I'm behind the net I'm doing my check downs; first option, second option, third option was to spin away from him and the fourth option was just to skate it in, cut to the inside, go to the outside. Once I realized I had a step on him, then came the fifth option, cut in and score."

Mika Zibanejad extended the Rangers lead to 5-3 with a shorthanded goal at 18:12.
New York (7-7-2) trailed 3-1 before goals from Tony DeAngelo at 17:45 of the second period and Pavel Buchnevich at 8:25 of the third period tied the game.
Chris Kreider also scored, Kevin Hayes had an NHL career-high three assists and Henrik Lundqvist made 31 saves.
"When you're 3-7-2, that's brutal," Hayes said. "We were in the basement of the League. You don't want to be there. You don't want to see your name down there. We battled back tonight like we battled back in the season."

Tomas Tatar scored twice and Max Domi extended his goal streak to four games for the Canadiens (8-5-2). Carey Price made 27 saves.
Montreal was playing the second game of a back-to-back after defeating the New York Islanders 4-3 in a shootout at Barclays Center on Monday.
"I don't care what anybody says, we had a 3-1 lead so we weren't that tired," Canadiens coach Claude Julien said. "At the end of the day, we made a lot of individual mistakes, mental mistakes. Whether it's focus, whatever it is, it was self-inflicted."
Tatar's first goal gave Montreal a 1-0 lead 23 seconds into the game. He kept the puck on a 2-on-1 and beat Lundqvist through the five-hole with a wrist shot from the left face-off circle.

The Rangers tied it 1-1 on Kreider's goal off a 2-on-1 rush at 15:50 of the first.
Tatar and Domi scored in a span of 1:47 early in the second period. Tatar made it 2-1 with a redirection from the right circle at 4:40. Domi extended the lead to 3-1 with a power-play goal at 6:27. It was his ninth goal in 15 games; he scored nine in 82 games last season.
The Rangers began their rally when DeAngelo scored on a wrist shot through traffic to make it 3-2 with 2:15 remaining in the second.
"You could just feel the energy change," Lundqvist said. "It made a difference going into the third."

So did the speech Rangers coach David Quinn gave during the intermission. He didn't like how they were playing, particularly in the second period. He said he felt they were coasting, not skating hard enough, not being physical enough, not giving enough effort, so he let them know.
"All I said is don't come in here and act like you care about it if you don't put the effort into it," Quinn said. "You've got to earn victories in this league and I thought we did a pretty good job of that in the third period. I thought we earned it."
Buchnevich tied it 3-3 off a rebound of Marc Staal's shot.

They said it

"I thought our jump was pretty good off the start of the game. I think just as the game went on we just allowed ourselves to become fatigued. I don't know if that's the reality of it, but it's what it seems to me." -- Canadiens goalie Carey Price
"The way we came back here, I think we can learn from it. The way we played in two periods didn't really help us and it put us in a tough spot. [Quinn] let us know going into the third, in a good way, and for us to see the difference, how we play for two and how we played in the third and how we got rewarded in the third, that's going to help us moving forward." -- Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist

Need to know

Canadiens forward Joel Armia left the game because of a lower-body injury following a knee-on-knee hit from Rangers defenseman Brendan Smith at 12:02 of the second period. Julien said Armia will be re-evaluated Wednesday. … Lundqvist got win No. 436 of his career. He needs one to tie Hall of Fame goalie Jacques Plante for seventh on the NHL's all-time list.

What's next

Canadiens: Host the Buffalo Sabres on Thursday (7:30 p.m. ET; TSN2, RDS, MSG-B, NHL.TV)
Rangers: At the Detroit Red Wings on Friday (7:30 p.m. ET; FS-D, MSG, NHL.TV)