• Preview
• Recap
• Bleachers
• Game Tracker

Rangers rally from early deficit, ground Jets

Mar 29, 2012 - 3:31 AM Winnipeg, MB (Sports Network) - Brian Boyle and Derek Stepan scored third- period goals to help the New York Rangers upend Winnipeg, 4-2, at MTS Centre.

Michael Del Zotto and Ryan Callahan scored for the Rangers, who increased their lead in the Atlantic Division to five points over idle Pittsburgh with their fifth victory in six games.

Marian Gaborik added a pair of assists, and Henrik Lundqvist made 22 saves for the win.

"It was tough to get anything going and then they got a two-goal lead on us," Callahan said. "I think our penalty-kill goal kind of lifted the team up and gave us momentum, and we began to take the game over."

Spencer Machacek and Bryan Little tallied for the Jets, losers in five of six and still eight points back of the final playoff spot in the East with five games left.

Ondrej Pavelec allowed four goals on 28 shots in defeat.

Boyle put the Rangers ahead with 3:07 played in the third, outmuscling a man behind the Winnipeg net, moving in front and lifting a shot under the crossbar from the left post.

New York went up by two just after the midway point on a power play, when Stepan lifted a broken-up Gaborik pass over Pavelec's shoulder on the near side.

Despite misfiring on five power plays over the first 19-plus minutes of regulation, Winnipeg tallied the game's first goal less than four minutes into the second when Machacek's right-wing shot slipped through Lundqvist's pads from the right wing.

It was 2-0 less than a minute later on Little's redirection of a Blake Wheeler centering feed, but Del Zotto halved the visitors' deficit at 7:44 while the Rangers were shorthanded.

Callahan evened the score at 18:23 with a shot through a scramble in the crease, then New York was awarded a four-minute advantage after Andrew Ladd was sent off for high sticking -- but failed to convert as the advantage bled into the start of the third period.

"Disappointing part of the game for me really was in the power play and our special teams," said Jets head coach Claude Noel. "I think that?s pretty much how it went. I think the turning point in the game really was the short-handed goal that we gave up because they didn't have a lot of life."

Game Notes

The Rangers swept the four-game season series, doing so for the first time since 1999-2000, when the Atlanta/Winnipeg franchise arrived in the NHL...New York swept a two-game series from the original Jets in 1992-93...New York hosts Montreal and the Jets travel to Carolina, both on Friday.