Rangers fall to Sharks in overtime on Will Smith's goal

After scoring only one goal in their first four games at Madison Square Garden this season, the Rangers finally got their offense on track on home ice Thursday night.

This time their defense let them down.

The Rangers’ Taylor Raddysh scored his second career hat trick to match one by the Sharks’ Macklin Celebrini, but another young San Jose star, Will Smith, blasted home the game-winning goal at 1:38 of overtime as San Jose earned its first win of the season, 6-5, leaving the Rangers oh-for-October at the Garden.

Smith, who had two goals and two assists, one-timed a pass from Celebrini (three goals, two assists) and beat Igor Shesterkin upstairs for the winner.

“That’s pretty poor out of us and not the way we want to play hockey,’’ Adam Fox said. “So there’s really not much to say.’’

“We just weren’t ready to play against a more desperate team than we were. They outplayed us,’’ J.T. Miller said. “We didn’t really respect our opponent today. We talked about making it hard to play against us in this building, and that was . . . just not acceptable for what we’re trying to do around here. I think everybody, to a man, would agree.’’

Rangers coach Mike Sullivan was asked if this loss should serve as some kind of wake-up call for his team.

“It should be,’’ he said. “Because I look at our last two outings [including Monday’s 3-1 loss to Minnesota], and that’s not the game that we want to put on the ice every night that we think will give us a chance to win, that’s for sure. You can’t play two-thirds of a game or half of a game and think you’re going to win consistently. And the last two games, that’s what we did.’’

The Sharks (1-4-2) entered the game as the last winless team in the league, but the Rangers (3-4-2) were 0-4 at home coming in, so they had no business not being ready to play against anyone.

And yet they got off to a poor start, getting pinned in their own end in the opening minutes until Adam Gaudette banged in a pass from Collin Graf to put the Sharks ahead 1-0 at 1:58 of the first period.

Gaudette was left all alone at the back post because defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov and Mika Zibanejad both went to chase Graf and no one stayed to cover Gaudette.

Celebrini’s first goal, on a power play, gave the Sharks a 2-0 lead at 6:17. Celebrini got credit for the goal that pinballed off the skates of Rangers defensemen Will Borgen and Matthew Robertson and got past a helpless Shesterkin (18 saves).

Raddysh scored on a wrist shot from the blue line, but Celebrini scored his second goal with nine seconds left in the period to make it 3-1 and prompt some boos as the Rangers left the ice for the intermission.

The Rangers turned it around in the second period, getting a power-play goal from Zibanejad at 4:04 and tying it on Juuso Parssinen’s goal at 6:47. Raddysh gave them their first lead when he scored a shorthanded goal at 12:10, and at that point, the Rangers looked as if they’d taken control of the game.

But Gavrikov left Celebrini open in the left circle to chase Smith, who had the puck in the corner with time running down in the period. Smith burned him when he got the pass to Celebrini, who one-timed a shot past Shesterkin to tie it at 4-4 with 5.8 seconds left in the period.

Penalties to Will Cuylle and Raddysh gave the Sharks a five-on-three power play for 1:54 early in the third period, but the Rangers managed to kill it. However, one second after Raddysh’s penalty expired, Smith banged in a rebound to put the Sharks ahead 5-4 at 6:31.

Raddysh got the goal back when he stepped off the bench on a line change, took a pass from Miller in stride and wired a shot over Alex Nedeljkovic’s glove to tie it at 5-5 at 11:50.

“It was just unacceptable,’’ Fox said. “We got better as it went along, but we can’t come out like that and expect to win. And I don’t know, maybe we underestimated them as a team, but we got what we deserved.’’

Notes & quotes: Sullivan changed the forward lines, putting Alexis Lafreniere back with Zibanejad and Artemi Panarin and Cuylle back with Miller and Conor Sheary. Sullivan then changed up the bottom two lines, elevating Sam Carrick and Adam Edstrom to the third line with Raddysh and dropping Parssinen and Noah Laba to the fourth line with Matt Rempe . . . Rempe fought former Ranger Ryan Reaves at 5:55 of the first period after Reaves dumped Parssinen, but Rempe left the game after that with an upper-body injury. Sullivan said after the game that Rempe was being evaluated.

By Colin Stephenson

colin.stephenson@newsday.comColinSNewsday

Colin Stephenson covers the Rangers for Newsday. He has spent more than two decades covering the NHL and just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.