Shesterkin makes 21 saves, Rangers shut out Blue Jackets

COLUMBUS -- Igor Shesterkin made 21 saves for his fifth shutout of the season, and the New York Rangers defeated the Columbus Blue Jackets 4-0 at Nationwide Arena on Saturday.

Vincent Trocheck scored twice and Alexis Lafreniere and Artemi Panarin each had a goal and an assist for the Rangers (33-28-6), who have won two straight after a four-game losing streak (0-2-2).

“Early on, I thought we had a little bit too many turnovers when we weren't taking care of the puck as much as we wanted to,” Trocheck said. “They're very good on transition. But I thought after the first 10 minutes of the first period, we really started playing the right way, getting pucks in, making sure at the blue lines we weren't turning the puck over and then our defense led to offense.”

New York now holds the second wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference with 72 points.

“We're in charge of what we do. We're in complete charge of winning hockey games and won't have to look anywhere else,” Rangers coach Peter Laviolette said. “It's great if other teams don't win on any given night, but we've just got to be responsible for ourselves right now. There's still a ton of work, though, and so that's, I think, the focus.”

Daniil Tarasov made 17 saves for the Blue Jackets (31-27-8), who have lost three straight and five of their past six. They have been shut out in three of the past five games, including 4-0 to the Vegas Golden Knights on Thursday.

“I'll be honest, there was some frustration at the end. Like you could tell that we were frustrated,” Blue Jackets coach Dean Evason said. “And when you get frustrated, you kind of throw some blame around and we haven't done that, right? We’ve stuck together and that's what our message was after and will be again moving forward.”

Lafreniere opened the scoring at 1:43 of the first period. Blue Jackets defenseman Damon Severson lost the puck to Mika Zibanejad left of the net. Tarasov went to poke check the puck but Zibanejad managed to slip a backhanded pass to an open Lafreniere for the easy score into the open net.

“It was just kind of a bit of a cluster of bad things that could happen there,” Severson said. “So, yeah, bad bounce there.”

Evason saw it another way.

“We need one of those to come our way, but we have to work towards that as well,” he said.

Panarin made it 2-0 at 11:36 of the second period when he skated in from the left wall and sent a wrist shot past Tarasov's blocker from the left circle. He has 12 points (six goals, six assists) during an eight-game point streak.

“We're getting down the stretch here,” Blue Jackets forward Adam Fantilli said. “I mean, guys are starting to tighten it up defensively. Doesn't matter. We’ve got to create our own chances and score. We had a couple and didn't bear down on them.”

Trocheck extended the lead to 3-0 at 14:38 of the third period when he scored from the right circle from a Panarin cross-ice pass.

“We’re up 2-0 in the third,” Lafreniere said. “You don't want to sit back but you also want to be careful and make the right plays. So, that's all we really wanted to do.

“We didn't really give up much and it was a really good, complete team effort.”

Trocheck then scored short-handed with Tarasov pulled for an extra attacker at 16:41 for the 4-0 final.

“I thought we got better, honestly, almost every minute of the game,” Laviolette said. “Started a little bit jumpy but by the end of the first I thought we were playing pretty well, and then the second and third, I thought outstanding. So that's three periods, three games in a row where I thought we defended well, defended hard, gives us a chance to be successful.”

NOTES: Panarin’s streak tied his season best (Oct. 9-26). He had three eight-game point streaks in 2023-24, including a career-high 15 games, which set a Rangers record for the longest run to open a season. … Blue Jackets forward Kirill Marchenko played his 200th NHL game. He has 129 points (69 goals, 60 assists). ... Rangers defenseman Adam Fox returned after missing eight games due to an upper-body injury. He had one assist and two blocks in 20:36 of ice time.