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Penguins rally past Rangers

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Mike Sullivan is impressed with his team’s resiliency. The Pittsburgh Penguins coach would just prefer it if his players didn’t rely on it so much.

Kris Letang scored in the final round of a shootout, and Pittsburgh beat the New York Rangers 4-3 on Friday night for its third straight comeback victory.

Letang ripped a backhand over Igor Shesterkin to put the Penguins in front. Tristan Jarry collected his first win of the season when he stuffed New York’s Tony DeAngelo moments later. Jarry’s teammates poured over the boards to celebrate, while Sullivan exhaled after Pittsburgh scrambled back from a two-goal deficit.

“Once again it seems to be a bit of a recurring theme where it takes that type of adversity in the game for us to respond,” Sullivan said. “We’ve got to find ways to have better starts.”

New York’s Filip Chytil, Adam Fox and Kaapo Kakko scored in a 3:01 span of the second period to give the Rangers a 3-1 lead. Shesterkin made 26 stops but let in two of the three shots he faced in the shootout.

“Just a part of our learning curve,” Rangers coach David Quinn said. “We have to understand we’re up 3-1, there’s a certain way to play. Certainly didn’t do that tonight.”

Bryan Rust and Jared McCann collected their first goals of the season for Pittsburgh, which has won three straight following an 0-2 start. Teddy Blueger tied it with less than 10 minutes to go and Jarry finished with 31 saves, an impressive response after being given two games off following a pair of rocky performance in Philadelphia last week.

“It’s huge,” McCann said. “Tristan works hard every single day. He’s a guy that you can really stand in front of and know he’s going to make the big save for us. Moving forward we’ve got to play better in front of him for sure.”

UP NEXT

The teams complete their two-game set in Pittsburgh on Sunday night. They meet again at Madison Square Garden on Jan. 30 and Feb. 1.

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