Henrik Lundqvist is great in regulation. He’s great in overtime. He’s great in the shootout. And unlike Donovan McNabb, he actually knows the rules: there are no ties in hockey, only in the NFL. He made 27 saves and led the Rangers to another come-from-behind, shootout victory, beating Ottawa 2-1. Hank has now let in two goals or fewer in 12 consecutive games. Unbelievable. Last night’s victory was his league-leading 12^th win of the year. His positioning is impeccable. He’s always in the right place. Remember suffering through the Mike Dunham era (who was always in the wrong place)? And the highlight-reel saves are piling up for the King also.

As for the game itself, it was kind of a nothing-special, ho-hum affair. Jarkko Ruutu spiced things up, though, by running at Rangers players, hitting them late and leaving his feet on his checks. Aaron Voros gave him a nice little crosscheck to the throat standing up for his teammates. It was worth the two minutes he spent in the box (though Ruutu was with him for a diving penalty). When Ruutu fanned on his shot in the shootout, he retrieved the puck in the corner and snapped it back at Lundqvist. Ass clown. The Rangers and Senators meet again on Saturday, so hopefully Colton Orr will take care of him.

The two teams played an evenly matched game. Daniel Alfredsson broke the 0-0 deadlock in the second, when he magically appeared out of the corner with the puck (ok, Dany Heatley may or may not have interfered – depending on which team you were rooting for – with Michal Rozsival and Chris Drury), weaved in and out of defenders and put the puck in the net. The Blueshirts specialty teams were the same old story. Perfect on the penalty kill. Useless on the power play. They should just start declining the penalty and take the loss of down. Once again, they had to rely on their third-period mojo, and much like Saturday’s euphoric comeback against Boston, it worked. Fredrik Sjostrom and Blair Betts pressured the puck in the corner, which led to a Marc Staal slap shot at the point. The rebound came out to Sjostrom, who tied the game.

The contest went to overtime, and the teams played the whole extra period without any stoppage in play. After about the two-minute mark, I didn’t even care who won anymore – I just wanted to see if they could play five straight minutes. They could. And for the second game in a row, the Rangers went to a shootout. Nikolai Zherdev (who, along with Voros, spent the third period in Tom Renney’s doghouse) shot first, went five-hole and scored the only goal of the shootout. Lundqvist did his part (as always), and the Rangers completed the comeback. After Zherdev scored, he still seemed to be mumbling to himself about his not-so-good game. When he was announced as the second star, he was nowhere to be seen. There’s some speculation that he and Dmitri Kalinin had a pierogi-eating contest lined up for 9:45, so he didn’t have time to come out and wave to the fans.

Next game: Wednesday vs. Vancouver, so party like it’s 1994.