Rangers routed by Hurricanes as Igor Shesterkin allows six goals

They’ve had struggles with their goaltending all season and they haven’t lived up to expectations to this point. But the Carolina Hurricanes still are a good team and the Rangers know that.

If they needed confirmation, though, they got it Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden when the Hurricanes, riding a three-game winning streak, came to town for the first game of the calendar year and thumped the Rangers, 6-1.

Carolina dominated the special teams, scoring two power-play goals in four opportunities and keeping the Rangers — who had the best power play in the league coming in — off the board on their three chances with the man advantage.

“Anytime you lose a specialty teams battle, it’s tough to win games, especially whenever they score two and we score none on the power play,’’ a glum-looking Vincent Trocheck said. “We’ve got to be better.’’

“Their special teams were clicking, ours weren’t,’’ said Chris Kreider, who scored the Rangers’ only goal. “It’s something that we’ve been able to lean on all year, and it’s hard to chase a game against that team. They’re pretty good with a lead.’’

Andrei Svechnikov had two goals and former Rangers defenseman Brady Skjei had three assists. 

Carolina entered the game last in the NHL in save percentage, yet goaltender Pyotr Kochetkov was excellent while stopping 28 of 29 shots as the Hurricanes evened the season series at 1-1.

The Rangers (25-10-1, 51 points) had beaten Carolina (21-13-4, 46 points) in the teams’ first meeting on Nov. 2 at the Garden. They don’t see each other again until March 12, when they meet for the final time of the season, in Raleigh.

Carolina got the early lead on a power-play goal by Jack Drury — the nephew of Rangers GM Chris Drury — at 1:49 of the first period. They made it 2-0 on another power-play goal, this one by Svechnikov with 30.4 seconds remaining in the period.

The Rangers scored at 4:30 of the second period, less than a minute after their second power play of the game expired. Jacob Trouba wristed a shot from the point that Kreider tipped in for his 19th goal of the season, pulling the Rangers within 2-1. At that point, it seemed as if all the momentum had shifted to the Rangers.

But a terrible turnover by the Rangers in their own end undid all that two minutes later. Defenseman Erik Gustafsson was carrying the puck behind his own net, and banked a drop pass off the boards, expecting his defense partner, Braden Schneider to pick the puck up and take it out the other side.

But the puck took a weird bounce, and ended up in front of the goal line. Goaltender Igor Shesterkin (six goals allowed on 27 shots) was the closest to it and he got to the puck and shoveled it into the corner.

But Jordan Staal, just onto the ice on a line change, got to it first, and passed to the slot, where Jordan Martinook was all alone to fire it in past Shesterkin and give Carolina a 3-1 lead at 6:32.

That ended up being a turning point. The Rangers’ comeback was short-circuited, and third-period goals by Jalen Chatfield, Svechnikov and Michael Bunting turned the game into a rout.

Rangers coach Peter Laviolette said he was most disappointed by the way the Rangers simply folded in the third.

“The third goal, there’s a poor exchange trying to break the puck out [and] it’s in the back of the net. And I think that flattened us a little bit,’’ Laviolette said. “But we still pushed through the rest of the period.

“If I’m going to go after a period, it’s the third period. I hate it . . . They played a simple game in the third]. They flipped it out, they put it behind us, and we got caught turning pucks over and chasing down things, trying to chase a game.’’

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.