Could Lias Andersson's dirty goal be the spark he needs to go on a scoring outburst for the Rangers?

Hockey players joke all the time about scoring dirty goals, where they go to the front of the net and the puck goes in off their backside.

Well, Lias Andersson actually did that Monday in the Rangers’ 4-2 win over the Ottawa Senators. Andersson, the Rangers’ 20-year-old fourth-line center, scored his first goal of the season when the rebound of Ryan Strome's shot literally bounced off his butt and dropped into the net.

The rookie from Sweden called the goal “probably the ugliest’’ he’s ever scored. But he wouldn’t apologize for it.

“I felt something back there and I looked over my shoulder and [the puck] was rolling in,’’ he said. “I don’t know if I touched it or if it was [Ottawa goalie Craig Anderson’s] stick. The important thing was we scored.’’

The goal broke a 1-1 tie and put the Rangers ahead for good. Now, the question for Andersson – the No. 7 overall pick in the 2017 draft – is whether this dirtiest of goals could do for him what 19-year-old Filip Chytil’s first goal did for him.

Chytil, Andersson’s fellow 2017 first-round pick, started the season goalless in the first 17 games. Rangers coach David Quinn kept saying he had the feeling that once he got his first goal, a bunch more would follow. And when Chytil finally got a goal in Game No. 18, he proceeded to score in each of the next four games.

“I don’t know,’’ Andersson said when asked if his goal could spark an outburst like Chytil’s. “I want to make sure I’m not out there for any goals against, first of all. I want to do the defensive job. I’m on the fourth line, so I guess I’m not expected to score a goal every game. I’m not on the power play, so I’m not expected to score every game. But I just try to work hard every day and see what happens.’’

Chytil was on the fourth line when he scored his first goal, but right around that time, Pavel Buchnevich had just gone down with a broken thumb, opening a spot for a wing on the top two lines. Chytil, a center, stepped into that role, and now plays right wing on the Rangers’ hottest line with Chris Kreider and Kevin Hayes. Andersson, who started the season in AHL Hartford, took Chytil’s spot as the fourth-line center, and has averaged 9:02 of ice time over the last seven games. Against Ottawa, he played 8:30.

For now, with Mika Zibanejad, Hayes and fellow 20-year-old rookie Brett Howden holding down the top three center spots in the lineup, it’s hard to see Andersson’s goal doing anything to boost his ice time. There just doesn’t seem to be any available ice time for Andersson to take.

But he’s not about to complain.

“It’s the NHL, it’s not the AHL, so, I get it that players here are better than down in Hartford, and they take up a lot of ice time,’’ he said. “We’ve got many good players up here, so I get how I can’t come up here and take their spots. I’m just happy I’m up here and I’m trying to do everything I can every shift I’m out there.’’

When Andersson failed to make the team out of training camp, GM Jeff Gorton said the Rangers could have kept him and played him seven or eight minutes a night. The organization didn’t think that was the best thing for his development, so it sent him to the farm team in Hartford to make sure he got plenty of ice time and played on both the power play and the penalty kill. Andersson got called up in early November when Howden missed a game with an upper-body injury, and Gorton, reminded of what he said about not wanting Andersson around and getting little ice time, promised that the Rangers would monitor that.

By Colin Stephenson

colin.stephenson@newsday.comColinSNewsday

Colin Stephenson covers the Rangers for Newsday. He has spent more than two decades covering the NHL and just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.