Late rally can’t save Rangers from momentum-killing defeat

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Rangers can’t have anything nice, like leads or momentum.

Because whenever they get one of those things recently, they find a way to kill it.

With another disjointed effort in what has been almost two months of them, they dropped a 7-5 decision to the Blue Jackets here on Sunday night.

The Rangers (18-20-7) had just broken a five-game losing streak when they were able to pick up their first win ever in eight tries at Barclays Center, taking a 2-1 victory over the Islanders on Saturday afternoon. Coach David Quinn also showed some confidence in his young backup goalie, Alex Georgiev, who made 24 saves against the Islanders and who got the starting assignment for both ends of the weekend back-to-back. It also allowed starter Henrik Lundqvist to get what Quinn called “a mental breather.”

“The guys love playing for both our [goalies]. That’s the great news for us,” Quinn said before the game. “[Georgiev] is a great kid, works hard, and played a real good game [Saturday] night.”

Meanwhile, John Tortorella’s Blue Jackets (27-15-3) had quite the tumultuous week, with goalie Sergei Bobrovsky inciting “an incident” after an emotional loss to the Lightning in Tampa Bay on Jan. 8. Yet apparently everything had been sorted out internally, and Tortorella gave Bobrovsky his first start since returning to the team.

“I think it’s been a really good week for the team, with some of the s–t going around us, losing a game in Tampa, kind of blows up a little bit,” Tortorella said. “I think we handled it the right way in terms of defining how we go about our business here. The last five days have been a huge step in the right direction for this organization.”

So maybe the Rangers need some player insubordination, because it got Tortorella’s group to come out and play hard while at the end of a six-day stretch with four games plus travel — including their 2-1 win over the Capitals in Washington on Saturday. They didn’t lose any jump in the third period, when they extended the lead to 6-3 on David Savard sniper-shot from the right circle at 5:29.

Mats Zuccarello was able to get his second of the game when he banked one in off Bobrovsky with 5:00 remaining in regulation to make it 6-4, but it was too little, too late.

The game had started with a rather hectic pace. There were defensive breakdowns on both sides, and penalties galore.

The Rangers were actually able to take a 1-0 lead when Ryan Strome got his seventh of the season at 4:34 of the first, finishing a nice two-on-one feed from rookie Filip Chytil. But the superlative Artemi Panarin didn’t let the lead last for long — 34 seconds, to be exact — when he scored from in front on a blown coverage off a defensive-zone draw.

Former Rangers farmhand Anthony Duclair then gave Columbus a 2-1 lead when he toasted Kevin Shattenkirk wide and roofed one over Georgiev at 8:55 of the first. But before the wild opening 20 minutes could end, Chris Kreider got his team-leading 21st goal when he slipped a backhand past Bobrovsky at 17:56 to take a 2-2 tie into the second.

But the Rangers struggled to establish any sustained offensive pressure in the second period, and it came back to bite them. Cam Atkinson got his 26th of the season on a deft deflection at 14:00, followed by a Lukas Sedlak goal at 17:49 to make it 4-2.

Zuccarello gave the Rangers some life when he fired a quick shot off an offensive-zone draw that surprised Bobrovsky and made it 4-3 at 18:58 of the second, but that’s when the back-breaker came.

Defenseman Brendan Smith, playing his first game after three straight scratches, gave Nick Foligno just enough room on the back post for an easy tap-in goal with just two seconds remaining in the period, giving the Blue Jackets a 5-3 lead going into the third.

For all the hard work the Rangers are putting in, that’s just the way things are going for them.