To say the Rangers had no time to get their legs back underneath them after the All-Star break would be the understatement of the century. 

Coming out of the eight-day break in game action to a daunting pair of opponents in Colorado and Tampa Bay, the Blueshirts came alive in the third period to force overtime before Alexis Lafreniere scored 1:52 into the extra period to take a 2-1 win over the Avalanche and snag two points Monday night at Madison Square Garden. 

For the Rangers, it once again came down to winning a third period after they had trailed by one all night long. 

The drive they had been missing all game showed up in the final 20 minutes, in which Artemi Panarin evened the score at one-all with 8:43 left in regulation after he wristed the puck top shelf on ex-Ranger goalie Alexandar Georgiev. 

The Rangers went scoreless through the first two periods and had only goalie Jonathan Quick (31 saves) to thank for their one-goal deficit. 

The lack of goals was one thing — a trend that has befallen the Rangers — but the scarcity of quality scoring chances was entirely different. Posting three high-danger chances in the first period and just one in the second, the Rangers barely posed as a threat through 40 minutes. 

Colorado, on the other hand, had already racked up 11 high-danger chances entering the second intermission. 

The Rangers constantly gave up the puck. There was no attack, no will to make something happen against a team that consistently fought for control over the game. 

That was until they were staring a bad start to the final 33 games of the season in the face. 

The Rangers were repeatedly flipped through a turnstile in the first half of the first period, over which they found themselves shorthanded on three separate occasions.

They may have generated a handful of shorthanded chances, but those were some of their best scoring opportunities for a majority of the game. 

Quick, however, tracked nearly everything the Avalanche threw at him before MacKinnon, now on a 14-game point streak, tore through the neutral zone and bulldozed into the Rangers zone to open the scoring at the end of the period.