Rangers' Alexis Lafreniere scores in overtime to beat Avalanche

The Rangers, who have been pretty mediocre for the last eight weeks, certainly were hoping to be better coming out of the NHL All-Star break than they were going into it. But opening the second half against the high-flying Colorado Avalanche on Monday night at Madison Square Garden was a stiff challenge.

It was a challenge the Rangers met, though, thanks to a vintage performance by 38-year-old goalie Jonathan Quick and a lightning-quick snap-shot goal by Alexis Lafreniere against former Ranger Alexandar Georgiev with 3:07 left in overtime that gave them a thrilling 2-1 comeback victory.

It was the type of win that left them hopeful that they can recreate the kind of success they had early in the season, when they almost couldn’t lose.

“It’s one win, but we get a little bit of a restart, even though we won the last game before the break in Ottawa,’’ said Mika Zibanejad, who got the primary assist on Lafreniere’s winner as the Rangers moved to 31-16-3 and dropped Colorado to 32-14-4.

“January, as a whole, wasn’t our best month this season, and we’ve talked about it. We wanted to get a good start coming off this break. And we got the win tonight. We’ve just got to keep going, so this one means a lot.’’

“It doesn’t matter how great of a team you are, you’re going to deal with some adversity at some point,’’ said Quick, who made 32 saves and got bookend victories around the break, having played in the 7-2 win in Ottawa on Jan. 27. “We were able to get a win at the end, before the break, and one out of the break here. So it’s something to build off of.’’

On the winning goal, Zibanejad carried the puck into the Colorado zone and left a drop pass for Lafreniere, who cut to the middle of the ice and fired a high shot through some traffic and up into the top left corner for his 13th goal. He said he wasn’t looking to shoot the puck on the play.

“Not really,” Lafreniere said. “I was trying to see if anyone was open, but I couldn’t see much, so just tried to get to the middle and tried to get a shot.”

The Rangers trailed 1-0 entering the third period on a first-period goal by Nathan MacKinnon, who extended his point- scoring streak to 14 games. MacKinnon tied Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov for the league scoring lead with 85 points.

But Artemi Panarin, double-shifting on the top line with Zibanejad and Chris Kreider, tied it at 11:17 of the period with his 31st goal. He skated across from left to right before flinging a shot from above the right circle through a crowd of bodies and past Georgiev.

Quick had to make a stop on Mikko Rantanen from the slot with a minute to play in regulation and Georgiev had to stop Adam Fox’s shot from the right circle at the buzzer to send it to overtime.

Quick made two saves in the extra period. He also skated well out of his goal crease to beat an Avalanche player to a loose puck in the Rangers’ zone and managed to barely shoot the puck out of the zone to end the chance.

He laughed when asked about that later.

“I shouldn’t wander out that far,’’ he said. “But you know, it felt like the right play when I started skating. And then I thought I faked him, but he didn’t bite, and I realized I was in a little bit of trouble. And luckily, I bobbled it a little bit and got it into the neutral zone.’’

By Colin Stephenson

colin.stephenson@newsday.comColinSNewsday

Colin Stephenson covers the Rangers for Newsday. He has spent more than two decades covering the NHL and just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.