The New York Rangers kept finding ways to hang around, and then the Toronto Maple Leafs slammed the door at the very end.
Troy Stetcher scored with 27.5 seconds left to lift Toronto to a 5-4 win at Scotiabank Arena on Thursday night, extending the Rangers’ road skid to five games at 0-4-1. New York briefly clawed back into a tie when Alexis Lafreniere scored with 5:35 left in the third period, but the Leafs had the final push and cashed in with a delayed penalty call against Tye Kartye in effect. Toronto lifted Sergei Bobrovsky for an extra attacker, and Stetcher jumped into the right circle and fired a shot that appeared to deflect off a Ranger and up past Dylan Garand.
It was Stetcher’s first goal in 33 games and the kind of finish that sent Toronto to its third straight victory.
Brandon Duhaime drove the Leafs offense with a career-best three points, collecting one goal and two assists. Easton Cowan, Teddy Blueger and Kirill Marchenko also scored for Toronto, which finished with a 36-25 edge in shots. Bobrovsky stopped 21 shots for his 459th NHL win, tying Rangers Hall of Famer Henrik Lundqvist for sixth all-time.
For New York, Adam Fox had a four-assist night and set up Lafreniere’s tying goal. Mika Zibanejad, Oliver Bjorkstrand and Kartye also scored, while Garand made 31 saves and gave the Rangers a chance to escape with at least a point.
The loss dropped the Rangers to 6-0-0 at home and left them still searching for a road win since beating the Detroit Red Wings 2-0 on Oct. 2. They wrap up their two-game trip through Ontario against the Ottawa Senators on Saturday night.
Toronto struck first barely more than a minute into the game, taking advantage of a messy defensive change. Jake McCabe found Cowan just as he crossed the blue line, and Cowan split Sean Durzi and Marcus Pettersson before beating Garand with a clean wrist shot high on the glove side for a 1-0 lead. That was Toronto’s first shot of the night.
The Rangers answered quickly. At 5:39, Zibanejad parked himself in the slot and redirected Vladislav Gavrikov’s shot from the left point past Bobrovsky for his third goal of the season and first at even strength.
New York, though, gave it right back. Toronto’s fourth line, which had not scored all season, made it 2-1 at 10:01 when Blueger was left alone in front and finished Duhaime’s feed through Garand’s pads. The Rangers controlled more of the play the rest of the period, but Garand kept the damage down with a pair of huge stops, including one on Duhaime after he came in untouched down the right side and another on Auston Matthews in tight.
The Rangers pulled level again early in the second. Justin Dowling drove down the right boards, cut to the front and poked the puck toward Bobrovsky while falling, and Bjorkstrand was left free after Gavin McKenna lost him in coverage. Bjorkstrand wasted no time burying the tying goal at 2:37.
Garand and Gavrikov then combined to keep the game even. Marchenko led a 2-on-1 rush, but Garand denied his shot from the right circle. The rebound came to Morgan Rielly, whose follow-up looked like it might find an open net before Gavrikov got a piece of it and sent it into the netting.
New York took its first lead at 6:30 on yet another deflection. Fox sent a wrister from the right point into the crowd in front, Kartye got a touch in the slot, and the puck slipped past Bobrovsky for a 3-2 Rangers edge.
Toronto answered 90 seconds later. Duhaime scored his first goal in 66 games after Garand turned away his initial chance, then Duhaime pounced on the rebound and knocked it home to tie the game 3-3.
The middle period turned Toronto’s way in the later stages. New York went more than seven minutes without a shot on goal after Taylor Raddysh’s long wrister at 9:33, though Pavel Dorofeyev and J.T.
Miller both hit posts during that stretch. The Leafs started pressing harder, forcing Garand into a big save on Matthews and getting enough pressure on William Nylander to send his breakaway try over the crossbar.
The Rangers entered the night ranked second in the NHL on the penalty kill at 94.1 percent, but Toronto broke through on its first power play with 51 seconds left in the second. With Lafreniere in the box for hooking, Garand stopped Marchenko’s high shot from the slot but could not control the rebound. Marchenko found it and tucked it in for a 4-3 Toronto lead after two periods.
Neither team scored on an early third-period power play, and the Leafs looked in control once the period passed the halfway mark. Garand robbed Cowan with a little more than 6:30 left, and Lafreniere tied it less than a minute later with a long shot through traffic. Garand then made two more key saves that almost bought the Rangers a point, but Stetcher’s late blast ended that hope and set off the crowd of 18,782.
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