Rangers romp to road win over Senators

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The visiting New York Rangers scored three times in the first 12 minutes on Saturday to hand the slumping Ottawa Senators their sixth successive loss, beating them 5-2.

The win moved New York, the Atlantic Division leaders, to within two points of Ottawa for the Eastern Conference lead. The Senators are the defending conference champions and are in first place in the Northeast Division.

"The gap's been closed by the combination of the fact that we have played better and they've been having a bit of a tough go," New York coach Tom Renney told reporters.

Daniel Girardi, Brendan Shanahan and Jaromir Jagr all scored by the 11:40 mark of the opening period and Shanahan connected again in the second, scoring the 636th goal of his distinguished career.

That gave the Rangers a 4-0 lead and they withstood a mild challenge from the Senators before Blair Betts scored into the empty net in the final minute of the game.

New York goaltender Henrik Lundqvist made 31 saves for his league-leading 14th victory of the season. He has allowed two goals or less in 17 of his 24 starts.

Ottawa are suffering their longest winless streak since 2000.

GREAT START

"You didn't recognize their team until the second half of the game, I don't think," said Lundqvist.

"They made it definitely tough for us the second half of the game but because of our great start, we could keep focus and get the two points that we wanted."

Jagr scored for the third successive game. "The first period was probably the best period we played the whole season," he said.

"We wanted to have a good start and that's what we did today. We jumped on them. They're a very good team. If you give them room and time they are going to kill you."

* Ilya Kovalchuk scored his NHL-leading 21st goal of the season just 34 seconds into the game and goaltender Kari Lehtonen returned from injury with a shutout when the Atlanta Thrashers beat the New York Islanders 4-0 on the road. Lehtonen was 0-4 when he went down, missing 16 games.

* The surging St. Louis Blues won their sixth successive home game and moved to 8-1-1 in the last 10 games overall with a 3-1 win over the Chicago Blackhawks.

* Jussi Jokinen, Antti Miettinen and Mike Ribiero scored second-period goals when the visiting Dallas Stars registered a 4-1 victory over the Philadelphia Flyers.

(Writing by Mike Shalin; editing by Martin Petty)