Gaborik’s 2-point night leads Rangers past Carolina 3-1

Gaborik leads Rangers past ‘Canes, 3-1

RALEIGH, N.C. — Marian Gaborik scored his NHL-leading 25th goal and added an assist, and the New York Rangers beat the Carolina Hurricanes 3-1 on Monday night.

Gaborik increased his point total to 47, Brandon Dubinsky scored the go-ahead goal early in the third period, Henrik Lundqvist stopped 32 shots and Marc Staal scored into an empty net for the Rangers.

They’ve won three straight — their longest streak since reeling off seven in a row in October — since a 1-6-2 stretch led coach John Tortorella to shake up the roster.

Sergei Samsonov gave Carolina a short-lived 1-0 lead and Cam Ward made 28 saves. But the NHL’s worst team was denied its fourth two-game winning streak of a difficult season. The Hurricanes — who haven’t won three in a row all season — have 24 points, eight fewer than the league’s second-worst team.

Dubinsky, who also assisted on Gaborik’s goal, put the Rangers ahead to stay with 18:39 left when he broke for the net, took a pretty feed from Gaborik and beat Ward high with a backhander for his first goal since Oct. 17.

Lundqvist took care of the rest, stopping Carolina with an assortment of acrobatic saves down the stretch to help the Rangers polish off a sweep of a three-game road trip that also included victories at the New York Islanders and Philadelphia.

The current surge followed Tortorella’s lineup shifts, with defenseman Wade Redden and right wing Ales Kotalik, healthy scratches in the previous two games, returning to the ice for the Rangers — who won in Raleigh for just the third time in 11 visits.

Neither team could get anything going offensively early — the Rangers didn’t even put the puck on net until about 7½ minutes in — before Samsonov put Carolina up 1-0 with a wrap-around goal into an open net 46 seconds into the second.

The Rangers tied it 28 seconds later when Gaborik beat Ward with a wrist shot from the slot. He has four goals in six games and trails only San Jose’s Joe Thornton in the league’s scoring race.

NOTES: This was the first of three meetings between the teams in a 13-day span. … New York scratched C Brian Boyle (back). … D Tim Gleason returned for Carolina after missing three games with an upper-body injury. … The Hurricanes pulled out a few stops for this one, inviting wrestler Ric Flair to sound the siren that precedes the team’s entrance to the ice. Flair is considered a folk hero for Carolina, which after every goal plays a video of him exclaiming “Woo!”