Recap: Rangers Come Up Short in Shootout Loss to Washington

There was the 14-year veteran and seven-time league-leading goal scorer, and there was the just-turned-23-year-old rookie goaltender, staring one another down on Sunday afternoon. Alex Ovechkin has played more games at Madison Square Garden than Alexandar Georgiev has, but that fifth-floor Midtown rink is Georgiev's home turf and he has become very, very good this season at defending it.
The NHL's leading goal scorer fired more pucks than anyone toward Georgiev's net throughout the afternoon, and through 60 minutes of regulation, five more of 3-on-3 overtime, and finally when the Caps captain came off the bench in the shootout with a chance to end it, Georgiev never let Ovechkin get a single puck past him.
Except…
In a twist of an ending on Broadway, Ovechkin wound up winning yet another extra-time affair between these two division rivals, not by hitting the back of the net but rather when the rinkside officials saw a Toronto area code in their caller ID. The league war room phoned the Garden to overrule the on-ice crew and determine that Georgiev had, in fact, thrown his stick when the lumber came flying out of his hands and dislodged the puck on Ovechkin's shootout attempt.

The officials had huddled and initially waved off the play as a failed attempt; after Toronto stepped in, it was announced that a goal was awarded and the Capitals had a 3-2 shootout victory over the Rangers.
"Leave it to Ovie to score a goal without scoring," Marc Staal said.

And so a four-game season series that was filled with tight scores, momentum swings and dramatic hockey ended in a most bureaucratic fashion, but that wasn't enough to overshadow the entertaining hockey that led up to it. Nor could the ending overshadow the play over 65 minutes of Georgiev, who made 37 saves in the game - six of them to prevent Ovechkin from build ing on his league-leading total of 45 goals, the final save drawing a standing ovation when it came on an Ovechkin breakaway in the overtime period.
The teams then matched one another through three rounds of the shootout, but after Braden Holtby (22 saves) shut the door on Filip Chytil's deke to the left post, Ovechkin moseyed across the zone, faked a shot and dragged the puck to his forehand. Georgiev kicked out his left pad and the stick went flying, too.
"It's tough to explain, but he faked the shot and I went down earlier," said Georgiev, whose 37 saves upped his save percentage on Garden ice this season to a sterling .932. "As he was moving laterally, I kind of threw my leg and my stick at the same time, instinctively."
Rule 24.4 states, in part: "The goalkeeper may attempt to stop the shot in any manner except by throwing his stick or any object, or by deliberately dislodging the goal, in which case a goal shall be awarded."
"Probably the right call," David Quinn said afterward. "I wasn't surprised that it was overturned."
Quinn's Rangers, behind goals on Sunday from Ryan Strome and Pavel Buchnevich, wound up earning points in three out of their four games this season with the defending champions, but still dropping three of the games in extra time, including the team's last meeting in Washington exactly one week earlier. There were 13 lead changes over the four games, in which the combined score in regulation time was 15-13 Washington, including one Caps empty-netter.

"We played these guys hard the last couple games and had some good opportunities to come away with a win, and just were not able to find a way to do it. So that's definitely frustrating," Staal said. "But in the end, you get these guys into a shootout, you're doing a lot of things right."
"They're fighting for their lives from a playoff standpoint, and where they want to be seeded, and every play matters," said Quinn. "I think one game goes to overtime you might think it's some fluke, two maybe - but it's three out of four that have gone into overtime, and the other one is probably the better game we've played out of all of them, and we lost 5-3 here.
"Certainly a great measuring stick, but you want to win. But I think our guys should feel good about the direction we're going, the way guys have developed, and the way they're not intimidated by the Stanley Cup Champions."
Strome's goal was his ninth point (4-5--9) over the last 11 games, and it came off a Chris Kreider steal and setup just 45 seconds into the match - making it the third time in a span of four periods against the Capitals that the Rangers had scored in the opening minute of the frame (they scored 21 seconds into the first and third periods in Washington last Sunday).
Carl Hagelin, the ex-Ranger playing his fifth game with the Capitals, had the response just 1:18 later, the net opening up for him once Libor Hajek had blocked his pass right back to him. Andre Burakovsky put the visitors in front at 10:02, cutting between the circles off a rush and firing a wrist shot through a Nick Jensen screen for his ninth goal of the season.
That was the score that carried into the second period, which wound up belonging to Georgiev. He saw 20 Washington shots in the frame and turned back each one, holding the Rangers in the game until, with 5:40 to go before second intermission, Buchnevich ripped a puck into an open side after Chytil had done the dirty work at the net front to scrape a pass to him.

Chytil was returning from a two-game absence and "had a lot of jump," Quinn said, and he was being joined in his return by fellow rookie Brett Howden, who had missed 15 games spanning the month of February with an MCL sprain.
Meanwhile, Tony DeAngelo's assist along with Chytil's was his 12th since Feb. 4, tied for the most among NHL defensemen over that span.
"We really were on our heels in the second," Quinn said, adding of Georgiev: "I thought he did a great job helping us weather the storm for sure.
"And then I thought we played a pretty good third period. I wish we had gotten more shots, but that's a good team fighting for big-time playoff points. They make it really hard on you."
Perhaps nothing came up bigger for the Rangers in the third than their penalty kill, a perfect 4-for-4 on the day, including one final kill with less than four minutes left in a tie game. The PK allowed only five pucks to reach Georgiev in the four times shorthanded, and he was there to stop each one.
Buchnevich and Ovechkin had the best chances to end the game in overtime, one right after the other. First Holtby came out to make a standing save on Buchnevich from the low slot, and immediately the Caps set up Ovechkin the other way for a clean break on Georgiev.
"Just tried to be patient and wait," Georgiev said of that OT encounter. "I was expecting a shot from him, and that's what happened."
No one could have expected what happened in the shootout, but it is how the Rangers' three-game homestand wrapped up. The Blueshirts hit the road for games in Dallas and Detroit this week before returning home for a Saturday night clash with the Devils.