DENVER — This was just another feather in the Rangers’ cap, in a season that has collected a plume.
The Rangers bent but didn’t break against a heavy Avalanche team in a 3-2 shootout win at Ball Arena Thursday night, which counted as the first time the club has swept Colorado in the regular season since 2016-17.
Artemi Panarin and Vincent Trocheck scored in the skills competition to extend the Rangers’ win streak to four games — the last three of which they have taken in either overtime or a shootout.
This one quickly became a goaltending showdown between two goalies who used to share the same net.
It was only the fourth time the Avs’ Alexandar Georgiev was facing his former team, who shipped his negotiating rights to Colorado on the first day of the 2022 NHL Draft.
The Bulgarian-born netminder has always played with a little extra juice against the Rangers, and Thursday night was no different.
Entering the game with a 1-0-2 record with a 1.56 goals-against average and a .952 save percentage against the Rangers, Georgiev had never finished a game in regulation against the club that gave him his first NHL opportunity.
The two goaltenders went save-for-save for 39:27 of the game before the Rangers’ Igor Shesterkin was beat by Avalanche forward Casey Mittelstadt with just seconds left in the middle frame.
It was only a matter of time with the level Colorado played at from puck drop.
The Rangers generated some isolated quality scoring chances, such as Shesterkin’s stretch pass to Artemi Panarin before the star Russian wing was denied by Georgiev, but the Avalanche consistently attacked the game as a team.
Shesterkin went on to serve as a brick wall in overtime, making five big stops.
He finished with 38 saves, while Georgiev made 23 stops.