Rangers drop heartbreaker in OT after losing goal on challenge

It was a close video review that took the potentially game-winning goal off the board followed by a bum faceoff.

But really, the Rangers know it was more than that. As much as they know they’re getting bad breaks, they know they’re not doing enough to earn the good ones. And if they’re not quite ready to admit it, they know they’re a young team that still doesn’t know how to close out games.

So it was another brutal loss in what has been a month-long string of them, a 4-3 overtime defeat to the Blue Jackets on Thursday night at the Garden that opened the post-Christmas break in deflating fashion.

“It’s obviously a problem,” said goalie Henrik Lundqvist, beat just 31 seconds into the three-on-three extra period when Pierre-Luc Dubois flew up the left side and got one to trundle over his pad and in. “Tonight, you can talk about a bad bounce, but it obviously comes down to skill to close out games. That starts with me, to make that extra save at the end.”

This was the fifth time in the past nine games the Rangers (15-14-7) have blown a lead and lost in overtime. They are now 3-6-5 since Thanksgiving, and those losers’ points are hardly making any headway in the standings — where John Tortorella’s Blue Jackets (22-12-3) are pushing for the top spot in the Metropolitan Division.

Tortorella, who had his own starring role here on Broadway not too long ago, played a big part in this one, challenging a Ryan Strome goal with 4:36 left in regulation for offside. The goal would have given the Rangers a 4-2 lead, but after a review that saw Strome a half-stride too early into the zone, the goal was taken down and Tortorella’s team had new life.

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So much so that it went and pinned the Rangers, who failed on a couple tries to get it out of the zone before Marc Staal was forced to take an icing. The defensive-zone draw was between Boone Jenner and Kevin Hayes, and Hayes was adamant the puck dropped by the linesman never touched the ice. But the play continued, the puck went back to Zach Werenski, whose shot then deflected off Staal and through Lundqvist’s legs to make it 3-3 with just 2:20 remaining.

“That’s hockey,” said Chris Kreider, who scored his team-leading 18th and 19th goals. “It was a bad drop, and that’s just how it goes sometimes. It’s a half-inch from being a two-goal win, and it ends up being an overtime loss.”

The Rangers could sulk and let this thing snowball. It sure would be easy with this upcoming New Year’s trip, starting in Nashville on Saturday night and then going to St. Louis for Monday’s pre-celebration contest. But at the behest of coach David Quinn, they are not to concentrate on the bad bounces but what led to them and how they can correct that.

“You could look at it that way,” Quinn said about getting tough breaks. “But we had chances to do things right before the icing, which allowed the defensive-zone faceoff. … It’s learning how to win.”

Just like the other games during this stretch, it wasn’t all bad for the Blueshirts (although there was more blah). They negated an Oliver Bjorkstrand goal 9:17 into the first with Jimmy Vesey finishing a three-on-one odd-man rush, an assist to Hayes extending his career-best points streak to eight games. And when Lundqvist let up a tough one to David Savard at 16:08 of the first, it was Kreider scoring a power-play goal at 1:45 of the second to tie it, and then adding a snipe-shot from the slot at 12:06 of the third, giving his team a 3-2 lead.

But then came the regular old routine, which is getting harder to swallow with each repeat showing.

“That’s how it’s been going the last few weeks,” Lundqvist said. “It’s only on us. We can’t look outside the room. It’s in here. We need to figure it out.”