• Preview
• Recap
• Bleachers

Dawes, Lundqvist lift Rangers past Bruins

Mar 9, 2008 - 11:09 PM By Larry Fleisher PA SportsTicker Contributing Writer

NEW YORK (Ticker) - In the seven weeks since their last encounter with the Boston Bruins, things have dramatically changed for the New York Rangers.

Nigel Dawes scored the lone goal in the second round of the shootout and Henrik Lundqvist stopped Marco Sturm, Phil Kessel and David Krejci in the bonus format as the Rangers gained a point for the 12th straight game with a 1-0 victory over the Bruins on Sunday afternoon.

Lundqvist finished with 29 saves for New York, which avoided getting swept in the four-game season series. Two of those losses came in a home-and-home series January 19-20 when Boston posted a shootout victory and then recorded a 3-1 win here. The other came on October 20 in Boston when Kessel scored the lone goal in the shootout.

Lundqvist kept the Bruins off the board as he made seven saves in the first and nine in the second. He finished off his ninth shutout of the season and 16th of his career with 11 stops in the third - including big stops on Glen Metropolit and Krejci - and one in overtime.

"It felt good," Lundqvist said. "It was a good win. It was a low-scoring game, but it was still intense. There were a lot of scoring chances, especially in the third. It was fun to play and it felt really good to finally beat them in a shootout."

The Rangers are 14-3-3 in their last 20 and are putting together a strong playoff push for the second consecutive season.

"We were out of the playoffs and now we are in the playoffs, where we have a chance to go higher in the standings," Rangers captain Jaromir Jagr said. "You want to keep winning. You know what can happen when you lose one. It's like a snowball (effect) You just don't want to do that."

The latest win pushed New York (36-24-9) one point ahead of Boston (36-25-8) for sixth place with 13 games remaining. The Rangers also crept to within two points of fifth-place Ottawa, which led the East for most of the season.

"I think we're playing within the game plan," Dawes said. "I think three, four lines (are) rolling. Everyone's bought into the program. I think our defensive play has picked up a lot, too, and we're going to need that to win."

New York went to the shootout for the third straight home game and also is five points behind New Jersey for first place in the East.

"I think we can win the conference," Rangers coach Tom Renney said. "But we have to be better than we were today. We have to play better than we did against the Islanders here, against Philadelphia here and unfortunately those are three out of our last four games.

"I believe that they can achieve that when they put their minds to it and we've done a pretty job the last few weeks."

The Bruins lost for the third time in four games but were nowhere near as bad as they were in last week's losses to Washington and Toronto when they were outscored, 18-4. They are now two points ahead of eighth-place Philadelphia and gained this point without captain Zdeno Chara, who sat out with an apparent shoulder injury.

"It feels good considering all the circumstances," Boston coach Claude Julien said. "It's our third game in four nights, travel and you're missing another key player."

After stopping 23 shots in Saturday's win over Washington, Alex Auld got the start again for Boston. He made 35 saves in his fifth straight appearance and also made six of his stops on Jagr and robbed Scott Gomez on a breakaway with just over four minutes remaining.

"Missing the guys we were missing, guys stepped in and played great," said Auld, who has allowed two goals in his last three starts, but only has one win to show for his efforts. "It was a big point. One point helps a lot. Obviously we would have loved to get two and them get none, but it doesn't always work the way you want."

"I thought we played well," Bruins defenseman Dennis Wideman said. "We had a lot of huge saves against some of the best scorers in the league."