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[kaka2010]

It looked as if Coach John Tortorella’s experiment was working. He broke up the tandem of Marian Gaborik and the $60 million free agent brought in to ignite him, Brad Richards, and the Rangers had a three-goal lead over Ottawa with just 11 minutes to play Saturday afternoon.


But the Senators rallied for three straight goals, then scored the only goal in the shootout to win the game, 5-4, leaving the crowd at Madison Square Garden grumbling and booing.

Richards, who started the game in a funk after a mediocre start to his Rangers career, went from goat to hero with two goals and an assist.

But Richards went to goat again when Milan Michalek stole the puck from him in front of the Rangers’ net and scored the tying goal with 2 minutes 50 seconds left in regulation, and he stayed the goat when his shootout try missed the net.

“You can’t stop playing,” Richards said when asked what lessons could be taken from the defeat. “We’ve got to try to control the puck. We stopped doing it.”

The Rangers have now dropped the first two games of their six-game homestand, and they have been outshot in all nine games they have played this season. Ottawa held a 40-28 advantage.

Henrik Lundqvist, making his 17th straight start against the Senators, kept the Rangers in the game with some fine saves after they fell behind, 1-0, in the first period.

But in the second, the Rangers finally awoke, with help from a five-minute power play after Ottawa’s Zenon Konopka was given a major penalty and a game misconduct for boarding Artem Anisimov.

Richards directed the attack from his customary point position, and his shot from the blue line rebounded to Ryan Callahan for the Rangers’ first goal at 6:24.

Richards barged in during the same power play and made it 2-1 at 7:44 on an assist from Gaborik.

Early in the third period, Derek Stepan set up Gaborik for a goal, and then Richards made it 4-1 at 8:05 after a setup from Gaborik.

It was all going so swimmingly. But on Ottawa’s tying goal, Michalek lifted Richards’s stick as Richards skated in front of the Rangers’ goal, and swatted the puck in through a maze of legs.

Defensive play has been the one smudge on Richards’s otherwise sterling record in 11 N.H.L. seasons. He is a minus player for his career, and he finished minus-2 on Saturday.

“Some of the details of our game are still weak,” Tortorella said, “and until we get that solved, we’ll sputter.”

Before the game, Tortorella touched on the problem with the Richards-Gaborik partnership and why he decided to break it up temporarily.

“I think what’s going on there is they both want the puck,” he said. “Sometimes, the puck isn’t big enough for both of them.”

Richards is one of the best setup men in hockey; he ranks seventh among active players in assists per game. Gaborik is one of the best goal scorers; he is seventh in goals per game.

It should be a match made in heaven, but it was not in the season’s first eight games. Richards had a goal and four assists, and Gaborik had four goals and an assist.

Richards was often invisible in those games, while Gaborik was often dynamic and effective. Tortorella called Gaborik “our most effective forward from Day 1 this year.”

Gaborik was effective again Saturday, going plus-2 with a goal and two assists.

SLAP SHOTS

Zenon Konopka’s boarding major on the Rangers’ Artem Anisimov was not a hit from behind, but it did leave Anisimov laid out for a minute before he went to the bench, where he had an ice pack on his neck. Anisimov was not evaluated for a concussion, and he returned to play in two minutes. John Tortorella said he had not heard anything about Anisimov’s condition, “so he must be O.K.” ... Ottawa’s Daniel Alfredsson left the game after Wojtek Wolski hit him high and was penalized for an illegal check to the head. Tortorella said it should not have been a penalty because “the player ran into Wolski.” Wolski, who said he braced himself for collision when he saw Alfredsson skating toward him, said he looked at the replay and saw “no contact to the head.”


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