TORONTO — In a game between two of the hottest teams in the NHL, the Rangers were extinguished.
Six points now separate the Blueshirts and the Maple Leafs in the Eastern Conference standings after the home team rallied for a 4-3 shootout win on goals from Mitch Marner and Max Domi on Saturday night at Scotiabank Arena, where the parity of the two clubs was on full display to preview what could be an eventual playoff matchup.
Rangers goalie Igor Shesterkin posed as much of a challenge as he could with 31 saves on 34 shots.
Other than a drive to the net from Marner, it took an inadvertent deflection off a Rangers’ stick and a puck bounce off a knee to beat the 28-year-old netminder, who suffered his first loss since Jan. 26.
The Maple Leafs received strong goaltending as well from Ilya Samsonov, who finished with 32 saves.
Toronto took the regular-season series, 2-1, with Saturday night’s victory.
The teams traded goals through the second period to take a 2-2 tie into the final frame.
Amid their most aggressive period of the game, the Rangers pulled Shesterkin for the extra skater with over a minute remaining in regulation before Vincent Trocheck notched his second goal of the game to ultimately force overtime.
In the fourth round of the shootout, Trocheck was the Rangers’ last hope before he rang one off the post.
Toronto spent way more time in the offensive zone in the second than it did in the first, out-chancing the Rangers 11-4 and holding a 5-0 edge in high-danger chances. It resulted in goals from Marner and William Nylander, which sandwiched Vincent Trocheck’s score at the 5:03 mark of the middle frame.
The second line of Trocheck, Artemi Panarin and Alexis Lafreniere drove play for the Rangers all night.
Led by a three-point effort from Lafreniere, the trio ultimately combined for three goals and 13 shots on goal
The Rangers largely kept the Maple Leafs in front of them in the opening frame, in which Shesterkin was impenetrable and the visitors managed to take a 1-0 lead. Aside from the scoreboard, it felt like an evenly matched period.
Lafreniere gave his team the edge at the 11:33 mark when he unloaded a bullet shot from the middle of the zone that hit twine so fast nobody knew what had happened for a couple of seconds.
The two headlining heavyweights of the game, the Rangers’ Matt Rempe and the Maple Leafs’ Ryan Reaves, didn’t get on the ice at the same time until later in the first period. It was anticlimactic when Reaves appeared to say something to Rempe as the 21-year-old paid him no mind and skated away.
They came together again toward the end of the third period, but this time, Rempe accepted.
It was an evenly matched bout in which both bruisers landed their fair share of blows.