NEW YORK – “Costly Turnover Night” was not an official entry on the Madison Square Garden promotional calendar, but that ended up being the theme of the evening anyway.
In a game where both teams were fighting for vital playoff points and both team suffered from self-inflicted issues, the New York Rangers scored last, grabbing a 5-4 overtime win over the Minnesota Wild and bolstering both teams’ tenuous playoff positions in the process.
Marco Rossi tied the game early in the third period but Vincent Trocheck scored early in overtime as the Wild settled for one point for the second game in a row.
The Wild now move into seventh place in the Western Conference standings, tied with idle St. Louis, which has won 10 in a row.
Filip Gustavsson, busy all night, finished with 34 saves for the Wild, while Marcus Johansson had a goal and two assists, but Minnesota failed to overtake idle St. Louis for the seventh spot in the Western Conference standings. The Wild sit in the eighth and final playoff spot in the west with six games to play.
Rangers goalie Igor Shesterkin had 20 saves for the home club, which moved into a tie for the final Eastern Conference playoff spot with the win.
The Rangers had not played since Saturday and had the fresher legs early, testing Gustavsson repeatedly with 11 of the game’s first 12 shots. New York also took the game’s first penalty, and with the Wild using their five forwards man advantage unit, a Rangers turnover found Marcus Johansson unobstructed with the puck. He fed Nyquist at the side of the net, also uncovered, and Nyquist popped a low shot past Shesterkin on the stick side.
For Nyquist, it was his first goal since being traded to the Wild in early March. He had last scored for the Predators on Jan. 25.
The Wild’s lead went away when Gustavsson made a stick save on a long-range shot by Urho Vaakanainen, only to have Rangers defenseman Braden Schneider fire the rebound home. But the visitors answered barely two minutes later via Faber’s eighth goal of the season, on a shot from the blue line that beat the New York goalie between the knees.
Minnesota was out-shot 18-7 in the opening period but emerged with the lead. But the Rangers’ shooting gallery continued unabated in the middle frame, with Minnetonka native K’Andre Miller tying the game for New York by sending a low angle shot off Gustavsson’s right shoulder and into the top corner of the net.
After the Rangers took their first lead on a misplay in the Minnesota crease, Matt Boldy went to the penalty box for roughing and New York threatened to extend their advantage. Instead, it was the visitors taking advantage of a misplay this time, and Johansson’s wrist shot beat Shesterkin for Minnesota’s first shorthanded goal of the season.
What looked like a Mats Zuccarello goal that would’ve given Minnesota a 4-3 lead was reviewed and negated due to goalie interference, with no argument from the visitors bench. Instead, the Rangers took a lead into the second intermission when the puck slipped away from Marco Rossi at the blue line, springing Artemi Panarin on a breakaway, and ending with Panarin’s team-leading 34th goal of the season.
But the opening shift of the third period saw Miller cough up a puck in the defensive zone, and Boldy pounced, feeding Rossi to tie the game once again. Minnesota killed a brief 5-on-3 Rangers power play to keep the game tied in the latter half of the third.
Wild defenseman Declan Chisholm, who had been out of the lineup for five of the last six games, initially due to injury, returned on Wednesday, taking the place of Jon Merrill in the lineup. Chisholm caught up to Rangers star Mika Zibanejad on a first period rush to the net and swatted the puck away.
The Wild’s three-game East Coast road trip concludes on Friday with a visit ...
