The Rangers achieved the goal with their on-ice celebration to honor Mika Zibanejad before his 1,000th NHL game on Monday night.
Once the players hit the ice at Madison Square Garden, the Blueshirts struggled to hit the mark on anything.
The result was a 2-1 loss to the Senators, the team that traded Zibanejad to New York on July 18, 2016.
After a touching video clip narrated by Zibanejad’s wife, Irma, fellow members of the leadership group presented the longest-serving guard and his family with gifts from the organization.
The gifts included a trip to Greece for the whole family, a mini silver stick for his daughter Ella, and a specially engraved silver hockey stick for Zibanejad to celebrate the 1,000-game milestone.
The intimate ceremony continued into a powerful opening 20 minutes for the Rangers.
The Senators got a power play goal from Shane Pinto and he hit two goals before the home team put one puck into the net.
It was Juusu Parsinen, playing his first game since March 12 in Winnipeg, who finally registered the Rangers’ first shot on goal with 6:11 left in the first period.
The Rangers didn’t get much else going until they got a power play later in the frame.
Parsinen then flipped the puck over the glass — the first of two such misses committed by the Rangers — ensuring his team finished first.
The Rangers were only able to direct two more shots toward Ottawa goaltender James Reimer over the next 20 minutes, finishing with just nine steals on the night.
Four shots over two periods was the fewest for the Rangers since 1965-66, when the NHL began tracking shots per period.
While Conor Sheary got the Rangers’ winner on the board just over seven minutes into the final frame, the equalizer never came.