Rangers score 5 straight in 2nd, rally past Senators

OTTAWA -- The New York Rangers scored five consecutive goals in the second period, rallying to defeat the Ottawa Senators 7-2 at Canadian Tire Centre on Saturday.

“Tonight, with playing last night (against the Vegas Golden Knights), [facing] a rested team in their building, travel, short a few players, that’s a big win,” New York coach Peter Laviolette said.

Artemi Panarin had a goal and two assists, Alexis Lafrenière, Chris Kreider, Jonny Brodzinski and Zac Jones each had a goal and an assist, and Mika Zibanejad had two assists for the Rangers (30-16-3), who had lost two in a row and nine of their past 13 (4-7-2). Jonathan Quick made 29 saves for his first win since Dec. 15.

“I don’t think it’s a secret; I think we’ve been talking about it, we’ve been talking about the struggle, talking about trying to work through it,” Zibanejad said. “You can talk all you want. I think we’ve played some good hockey, but just haven’t been there. We haven’t been able to execute and get ourselves that type of win. But we did that tonight, so that was huge for us.”

New York improved to 9-0-0 in the second half of back to backs this season; it lost 5-2 to the Golden Knights on Friday.

“The efforts in the second games have been like they [were] tonight,” Laviolette said. “They’ve been on point. Their work ethic has been really good and we’ve been able to win in some tough situations.”

Brady Tkachuk and Jakob Chychrun scored, and Claude Giroux had his 700th NHL assist for the Senators (18-25-2), who were 3-0-2 in their past five. Mads Sogaard made nine saves in relief of Joonas Korpisalo, who allowed four goals on 17 shots before being replaced at 8:44 of the second period.

“It is frustrating because I think we gave them the win,” Ottawa coach Jacques Martin said. “We’re in a good situation and you face a little bit of adversity, but you’ve got to build resistance to that, and, you know, be able to stick with it. It seems like we lost our composure, we lost our compete level.”

Tkachuk gave the Senators a 1-0 lead at 11:43 of the first period. Giroux stole the puck from New York defenseman K'Andre Miller and left it for Tkachuk, who skated in and slipped it five-hole on Quick.

Chychrun extended it to 2-0 at 1:24 of the second period on the power play, one-timing a seam pass from Drake Batherson from the right slot.

“After the first period, we weren’t great, but we were in the game,” Martin said. “And then we got the second goal on the power play on a nice play. We had a pretty good situation, but the game is 60 minutes. I don’t think that we competed, especially the last 20 minutes. They were on the puck before us, they made plays and our level of competition wasn’t high enough.”

Lafreniere cut it to 2-1 at 5:51 after banking it in off Korpisalo’s left leg from behind the goal line.

“We find ourselves down, started off [the second period], we get a penalty, they score on the power play and it’s 2-0 all of a sudden,” Zibanejad said. “You know, how it’s been going, it’s easy to just have the mindset of ‘Here we go again,’ but we got some big-time plays from guys, not just on the goals, but before that, and that got us going. We really wanted a win before the [NHL All-Star] break. We knew we had to fight for it and we did. Finally, some pucks went in.”

Kreider tied it 2-2 at 8:33, beating Korpisalo with a long-range snap shot on the rush. With an assist on the goal, Zibanejad got his 500th point with the Rangers.

“Games like that are going to happen,” Ottawa forward Mathieu Joseph said. “I think we lost our maturity a little bit in the second period in the sense that we didn’t do what we’ve been doing.”

Jones gave the Rangers a 3-2 lead at 9:12 after finishing on a cross-slot pass from Panarin.

“When that guy has the puck,” Jones said of Panarin, “you’ve just got to find the open ice and he’s going to find you.”

Brodzinski made it 4-2 at 11:16 when he tipped a Jones point shot.

Blake Wheeler pushed it to 5-2 at 16:54, tapping in a pass from Zibanejad on a 2-on-1.

“We need to learn from this,” Giroux said. “We need to know that when that happens, we need to react differently and get back on our toes and just play the way that we know works for us. We didn’t do that tonight.”

Panarin scored into an empty net to make it 6-2 at 17:17 of the third period before Kaapo Kakko scored at 17:52 for the 7-2 final.

“Obviously, we’ve been on a little bit of a slide here, and things haven’t really been going our way,” Jones said. “But it was nice to end the first half, quote, unquote, with a win there, and go into the break feeling good.”

NOTES: New York played its last game before the All-Star break. … Zibanejad (534 games) required the fourth-fewest games in franchise history to reach 500 points. … Laviolette coached his 1,479th NHL game, tying Darryl Sutter for ninth most in league history. And with the win, Laviolette tied Al Arbour (782) for the seventh most in NHL history. … New York defenseman Ryan Lindgren, who left midway through the first period Friday with an upper-body injury, took warmups, but did not dress. … Rangers defenseman Jacob Trouba was suspended two games Saturday for elbowing Vegas forward Pavel Dorofeyev on Friday. ... Tkachuk recorded his fifth 20-goal season.