The collective gasp from the Madison Square Garden crowd could’ve pulled the pinwheel ceiling further toward the ice.
Repeatedly, the Rangers failed to clear the puck from their zone with seconds left in regulation before Senators defenseman Thomas Chabot flung it toward the net for his captain Brady Tkachuk to tip in for the tie score. It ultimately forced overtime, where Tkachuk finished it off himself with 17.4 seconds left in the extra period to hand the Rangers a gut-wrenching 3-2 loss on Friday night.
After peppering Rangers goalie Igor Shesterkin in the second half of the first period, the Senators carried it over in the middle frame. Senators forward Claude Giroux finally found twine for Ottawa, capitalizing on a rebound, but the Rangers challenged for offside and won it with 8:52 left in the second.
Trouba took a seat in the penalty box shortly after, however, allowing the Senators to score one that counted. Shesterkin denied several Senators trying to jam the puck in around the crease before it popped out to Tim Stutzle, who backhanded it in to knot the game at one-all.
The tug-of-war for control of the game was on from there, and Trouba did just the thing to get his team going by taking on the 6-foot-4, 221-pound Tkachuk. The Rangers played mean from then on out and Mika Zibanejad went five-hole on Senators netminder — and former Blueshirt — Cam Talbot at 6:03 of the third to regain the lead.
The Garden did collectively hold its breath late in the third, when a traffic around Shesterkin seemingly pushed the puck over the goal line. After review, the play was ruled dead before it snuck in under Shesterkin’s pad and was deemed not a goal.
Despite having to kill off Filip Chytil’s four-minute high-sticking penalty to start the game, after he drew blood from Senators defenseman Jake Sanderson just under a minute and a half in, the Rangers spent the first half of the first period swarming the offensive zone and heavily outshooting the visitors.
The Rangers were bound to strike first, and they did. Vitali Kravtsov was the one who made it happen with his first goal of the season. After his first shot caught Travis Hamonic in the throat, which sent the Ottawa defenseman to the ice and later to the locker room, the Russian winger recollected the puck and deposited it far side from the bottom of the left faceoff circle.
Kravtsov pumped his fist in celebration and was immediately swarmed by his new linemates, Chytil and Artemi Panarin, who gave the 22-year-old a few congratulatory gloves to the face and nudges to the head. The kid had earned the bump to the second line after a strong first game back following eight straight scratches.
“I felt the same way I did in Russia,” Kravtsov told The Post of his first game back after the Rangers’ morning skate in Tarrytown. “Confident. In the locker room, ice, everywhere — like I fit here.”
It was then all Senators in the second half of the first. Ottawa evened the shots on goal total and forced Shesterkin to make some heroic stops. Even Libor Hajek saved a goal, throwing his stick on the ice just in time to sweep a puck that trickled behind Shesterkin out of harm’s way.