It required a shootout, but the Avalanche got a much-needed win Thursday night, defeating the New York Rangers 4-3 at Madison Square Garden 48 hours after getting blasted 6-0 by the Islanders.

The win was just the second on the road this season, the first one coming Oct. 13 at Boston, and gave the Avalanche a 5-8-5 overall record with Saturday's game in New Jersey left to close out a four-game road trip through the NY/NJ metro area.

Alex Tanguay, who scored a second-period goal to give the Avalanche a 2-1 lead, beat goalie Henrik Lundqvist in the third round of the shootout before Colorado's Semyon Varlamov made a save against Lee Stempniak to seal the win. Tanguay showed a great deal of patience on his shootout goal, cutting across the slot and waiting for Lundqvist to go down before shooting over him.

Nathan MacKinnon, who tied the game 3-3 at 7:54 of the third period on a power play, scored on the first attempt of the shootout and Varlamov stopped Mats Zuccarello. Matt Duchene, who had a goal and an assist, was thwarted in the second round and New York's Derek Stepan answered with a goal.

Avalanche coach Patrick Roy changed line combinations again and the Ryan O'Reilly-Duchene-Tanguay unit was easily the most effective. The trio combined for two goals, two assists and five shots. Tanguay also shot the puck off the goal post in overtime and Duchene won 15 of 24 faceoffs.

Tyson Barrie had two assists, Cody McLeod had five hits and a fight, Marc-Andre Cliche won seven of 11 faceoffs and helped kill all three Rangers power plays, and Erik Johnson logged 28:03. Zach Redmond had an assist but he and defense partner Nick Holden were both minus-2.

Varlamov finished with 30 saves, including a breakaway against Dominic Moore with just over a minute left in the second period to keep the Avalanche within a goal at 3-2, a stop against Rick Nash midway through the third period and saves against Martin St. Louis and Zuccarello as time was running out in the period.

"I thought (Varlamov) was equal to the team, everybody played hard," Roy said. "I thought we did a good job in front of him and I thought our defense worked really well. He came up solid a couple times in the third on some great plays in the slot area."

The Avalanche came out hard in the first period. They outshot the Rangers 12-6 and took a 1-0 lead on Duchene's goal at 15:09.

"We had a really good start," Roy said. "We had good jump. Unfortunately for us, it was only 1-0. In the second they showed a lot of skill and scored nice goals goals and drove the net hard."

Kevin Hayes tied the game on a delayed penalty at 6:42 of the second period and Tanguay regained the Avalanche lead at 11:09 when he redirected Johnson's pass into the net, but the Rangers got goals from Stepan and Dan Girardi 1:43 apart late in the period for a 3-2 lead.

"All I wanted was for us to play a strong 20 minutes (in the third)," Roy said. "I think we did a good job in the third. I thought we gave a little too much, but I thought our guys showed great urgency and really worked hard."

MacKinnon tied the game when his shot in the left circle hit Girardi's stick and caromed behind Lundqvist with Duchene on the doorstep. The goal ended the Avalanche's 0-for-19 drought on power plays. The Rangers outshot the Avalanche 14-6 in the period and 33-29 for the game.

"We knew we had to be strong and resilient against them because they are a very good team," MacKinnon said. "They went to the (Stanley Cup) finals last year. We had a fortunate bounce when we needed it in the third and found a way to win in the shootout."

This was the Avalanche lineup Thursday:

FORWARDS
Ryan O'Reilly - Matt Duchene - Alex Tanguay
Gabriel Landeskog - John Mitchell - Jarome Iginla
Jamie McGinn - Nathan MacKinnon - Daniel Briere
Cody McLeod - Marc-Andre Cliche - Max Talbot

DEFENSEMEN
Jan Hejda - Erik Johnson
Nate Guenin - Tyson Barrie
Nick Holden - Zach Redmond

GOALIES
Semyon Varlamov
Reto Berra



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