Rangers drop third straight after GM signals he’s looking for shake-up

Shattering a two-all tie with two goals in the first 8 ½ minutes of the third period, the Blues added insult to injury and handed the Rangers a 5-2 loss Monday night at Madison Square Garden.

Head coach Peter Laviolette expressed his displeasure with how the Blueshirts answered St. Louis after Brayden Schenn scored 1:12 into the final frame to jump-start what ultimately became a three-goal period — with one empty-netter — for the Blues.

“We give up a goal to start the third period and then I don’t like the response after that,” Laviolette said. “That’s the time to dig in, go get the next one and bring it back to even and we weren’t able to do that.”

So is Laviolette concerned with the response he’s seen from the Rangers as of late?

“We need more of a response, because it’s not good enough,” he said. “It wasn’t good enough tonight. We need more response. When something like that happens, there’s got to be a difference in the way we play the game, the attack that we go on. Right now, that was missing.”

The Rangers may have scored first for the first time since the first game of their recent four-game road trip in Seattle on Nov. 17, but it proved to be a short-lived lead.

Skating in their first game under new head coach Jim Montgomery, the Blues managed to answer just under three minutes later.

Mika Zibanejad’s weak pass off the boards was tough for Jacob Trouba to handle before Schenn beat the Rangers captain to the puck.

Schenn dished to Jordan Kyrou, who blasted one from between the circles for the 1-1 score.

“We’re giving up too much, there’s no question,” Laviolette said. “We’re not going to win games giving up 40 or 50 shots, it’s got to be much tighter with what we’re doing. We need more. There’s parts of the game I thought we were good. There’s parts of the game we weren’t very good at all.”

The Blues took their first lead of the night in the second period, when the visitors funneled a neutral-zone giveaway back into the Rangers zone and had the home team on the ropes.

Zack Bolduc then put a bouncing puck past Rangers goalie Igor Shesterkin to score his first goal of the season and first of two goals on the night.

Less than three minutes later, however, Cuylle first won the race to the puck to keep it in the Rangers zone before he crashed the net and buried his second of the night off a feed from Zibanejad.

The Blues ultimately outshot the Rangers 11-7 over the final 20 minutes, keeping the home team to the perimeter. Former Ranger Pavel Buchnevich’s empty-net goal then capped the scoring.

“It [doesn’t] feel great,” said Artemi Panarin, who went without a point for just the fourth game this season. “But we’re professionals here, we have to fix our mistakes and go forward.”