Rangers undone by bad bounces in loss to Canadiens

The Rangers had worked to earn most of the best scoring chances early Friday night and only had a one-goal lead to show for it, thanks to Carey Price.

The Canadiens then used a pair of second-period dump-ins to grab hold of the game for good.

Teams often lament bad bounces, and while the Rangers had a serious case for two not going their way, they allowed those bad bounces to wipe out the strong effort they had put together in a 4-2 loss to the Habs at the Garden.

“It’s a game of bounces, and we didn’t regroup from the bad ones well enough,” said Brendan Lemieux, whose first goal as a Ranger came with 2:32 left in the third period and cut the Canadiens’ lead to 3-2, only for Joel Armia to complete his hat trick on an empty-netter in the final minute.

After coming back from two-goal deficits in back-to-back games to take two of the Eastern Conference’s best to overtime — only to come up short in both — the Rangers (27-27-10) took the more simple route to a loss Friday, falling in regulation to the playoff-chasing Canadiens (35-23-7).

Armia gave the Canadiens the lead for good on a freak goal at 14:38 of the second period. Christian Folin tried to dump the puck in down the left boards, but the puck appeared to hit off something and took a sharp right turn toward the net. An alert Henrik Lundqvist dropped down to make the late save, but Armia walked in to flip the rebound through for the 2-1 advantage.

“It’s a tough bounce, obviously,” said Lundqvist, who stopped 32 of 35 shots. “This was a game we played good enough to win, but that goal changed a lot. It changed the momentum. After that first [goal], you could see we got a little tense. They get that bounce on the second one, and it’s a different game after that.”

The Canadiens had tied the game on another dump-in, this one clanking off end boards right to Tomas Tatar in the right circle. Tatar spun around and sent a pass in front to a crashing Gallagher, who beat Kevin Shattenkirk to the puck and finished it off to make it 1-1 at 7:27 of the second.

“It just felt like the goals deflated us, especially that second one,” coach David Quinn said. “Just the way they got them was too easy. Here we are working hard and getting chances, and nothing going in for us. Bad bounces and quirky plays and it ends up in the back of the net. That being said, we have to be mentally tough enough to not feel sorry for ourselves and keep playing.”

Armia added his second of the night early in the third, this one in more conventional fashion as he skated to the net, holding off Brady Skjei, and tucked one past Lundqvist to go up 3-1 at 4:29.

The Rangers had come out buzzing in the first period, with Vladislav Namestnikov in the middle of almost every quality scoring chance. He was responsible for six of their first 14 shots on goal, with one getting through when he redirected Skjei’s wrister for the 1-0 lead at 4:41 of the first period.

But Price kept the Rangers at bay, finishing the night with 28 saves.

“Frustrating when you think you played a really good 30 minutes and it’s 1-0, and you feel like it could be a little bit more,” Quinn said. “But you’re talking about one of the best goalies in the world. You probably need to bear down a little bit more if you want to get one by him.”