Sudden loss for Rangers as Senators tie it late, net OT winner

“It wasn’t good enough.’’

That was Rangers coach Gerard Gallant’s blunt assessment of his team’s performance after the Blueshirts blew yet another lead, losing to the Ottawa Senators, 3-2, in overtime Friday night at Madison Square Garden in the back end of a home-and-home set between the teams.

Brady Tkachuk’s two goals, one in the final minute of regulation and the other in the final minute of overtime, may have been the vehicles that carried the Senators to the win, but as far as Gallant was concerned, the Rangers (11-9-5) lost the game long before that.

“We had two chances in overtime, but we didn’t play well enough to be there, to be honest with you,’’ Gallant said. “But we were fortunate to be 2-2. But no, it wasn’t good enough, especially the first two periods.’’

The Rangers indeed were fortunate to be in the game, tied 1-1 after two periods, mostly because of the brilliant work of goaltender Igor Shesterkin. He started his first game since Monday, when he said he was “ashamed’’ of how poorly he’d played that night in a 5-3 loss to the Devils.

Shesterkin, last year’s Vezina Trophy winner, made 34 saves Friday — including stopping 19 of 20 Senators shots in the first 40 minutes — to keep the Rangers in it.

The Rangers were better in the third period, putting much more pressure on Ottawa goalie Cam Talbot, and when Mika Zibanejad scored at 6:03 to give them a 2-1 lead, it looked as if Shesterkin’s marvelous performance would steal the win for them.

Shesterkin made an unbelievable pad save on former Ranger Tyler Motte’s back-post shot — doing a split and somehow stretching his leg across the width of the goal to trap the puck up against the post — with 7:18 to go.

After that, the Rangers probably thought they’d be able to close out the game. Instead, the Senators — with their net empty and the extra skater on — got the tying goal with 48.4 seconds remaining in regulation when Thomas Chabot managed to keep a puck in at the Rangers’ blue line and fired a long, desperate shot that Tkachuk tipped past Shesterkin to make it 2-2.

“We didn’t play good enough in the first and second,’’ a glum Zibanejad said. “We did a little bit better job in the third, but it’s definitely disappointing to do that, especially with Shesty giving us a chance to win. We’ve got to take advantage of that.’’

In the final minute of overtime, the Rangers had a chance to win it when Artemi Panarin passed to Adam Fox below the right circle. If he could have transferred the puck from his forehand to his backhand cleanly, Fox would have had the back half of the goal wide open, but Chabot stole the puck from him and sent it up ice for Tkachuk.

Panarin did his best to race back and put pressure on, but Tkachuk coolly went forehand-backhand and slipped the winner under Shesterkin with 17.4 seconds left in OT.

The Rangers, who blew a three-goal lead entering the third period in a 4-3 loss to Edmonton last Saturday and then blew a two-goal lead in losing to the Devils on Monday, actually blew two leads Friday.

They went ahead 1-0 when rookie Vitali Kravtsov scored his first goal of the season at 10:31 of the first period.

Ottawa tied it when Tim Stutzle scored a power-play goal at 12:16 of the second period.

Though the Rangers managed to get a loser’s point, it still was a pretty sickening way to open a weekend back-to-back. They will play Chicago (6-12-4), which owns the second-worst record in the league, on Saturday at the Garden. Chicago did not play Friday.

“Well,’’ Gallant said, “we better play better than we played tonight.’’

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.