NY Rangers top Columbus Blue Jackets as Carl Hagelin scores twice
Jay LaPrete/APThe Rangers celebrate a 4-2 win in Columbus over the Blue Jackets Thursday night.
RANGERS 4, BLUE JACKETS 2
COLUMBUS - The Rangers and Blue Jackets have swapped so many players the past 15 months that without the jerseys, they'd probably confuse allegiances.
But come to think of it, no one may recognize these Rangers after Thursday night's 4-2 win over Columbus at Nationwide Arena, since the surging Blueshirts are now in unfamiliar territory: At .500 for the first time under first-year coach Alain Vigneault.
Carl Hagelin notched his second, two-goal game of the season, Ryan Callahan tallied on the power play, and Ryan McDonagh added an empty-netter to lift the Rangers (8-8-0, 16 points) to their second straight victory and their sixth win in eight games, crawling all the way back to even after opening the fall 2-6-0.
Rookie goalie Cam Talbot (32 saves) made all the big stops to improve his record to 3-1-0, spelling Henrik Lundqvist in the second game of a back-to-back sweep following Wednesday's 5-1 home win over the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Former Rangers Brandon Dubinsky and Marian Gaborik both picked up assists but couldn't topple the team that traded them in their first meeting since the deals.
The Rangers, of course, sent Dubinsky and Artem Anisimov in a package the summer of 2012 to acquire Rick Nash from Columbus. Then they dealt Gaborik to the Jackets at last season's trade deadline in exchange for Derick Brassard, Derek Dorsett and John Moore. Rangers defenseman Anton Stralman also is a former Jacket, and New York associate head coach Scott Arniel coached in Columbus for one-and-a-half seasons.
At the moment, the Rangers are in better shape than Columbus, despite Nash being out indefinitely with concussion symptoms, unable to make his homecoming to Ohio to face the team that he captained after being drafted first overall in 2002.
The Blue Jackets (5-10-0, 10 points), now New York's Metropolitan Division foe, have lost five in a row.
The Rangers surrendered an early 1-0 lead but pushed it back to 3-1. The difference-making goal actually was the result of Hagelin pressuring Jackets defenseman Nikita Nikitin, and then poking the giveaway at the side of the net off the stick of Columbus' Mark Letestu and in.
The Blueshirts, unfortunately, already missing Nash, lost Taylor Pyatt for the remainder of the game 3:28 into the second period due to a headshot from former Ranger Fedor Tyutin, who also scored Columbus' goal 17:31 into the first period to tie the game at 1-1.
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