Joey MacDonald made 35 saves while Nate Thompson and Richard Park scored shorthanded goals to lead the New York Islanders to a 2-1 victory over the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden Tuesday night.

The Rangers dominated play in the first two periods, outshooting their visiting rivals 29-12, but they couldn't solve MacDonald who time and again came up with big saves to keep the game scoreless.

"We weathered the storm in the first two periods," Islanders coach Scott Gordon admitted. "As for our goaltender, he's loving this opportunity. He never expected to be playing this much. Fortunately he's playing well."

MacDonald was quick to give credit to his teammates. "Tonight we were out-shot by a lot but we stuck to our game plan and capitalized on our chances," MacDonald said. "They put some pressure on us in the second period, but our defense had some big blocks."

The Islanders finally broke the scoreless tie at the 3:18 mark of the third period. With Mark Streit in the penalty box for tripping, Thompson and Frans Nielsen came in on a 2-on-1 break. Thompson passed to Nielsen who hit the post with his shot. The rebound bounced up in the air and Thompson batted it into the net with a baseball-like swing for his first NHL goal.

"I envisioned it going off my shin pad or something like that. Definitely not like that, but it felt great," Thompson said. "I played baseball for two years. I don’t know what my batting average was, but I don’t think it was too good."

The Isles got a big lift from taking the lead and finally solving Rangers' goalie Henrik Lundqvist. "It was great feeling on the bench after the goal," Thompson added. "The team was lifted from it. We have a lot of resilience and character on this team."

Richard Park scored another shorthanded goal at the 8:00 mark to increase the Islander lead to 2-0. Park skated down the left side alone and lifted a hard wrister over Lundqvist's shoulder. It was the Islanders' league leading sixth shorthanded goal of the year.

Markus Naslund scored with 1:41 left in the game to end MacDonald's bid at his first NHL shutout, but the Islanders were able to hold on for the victory.

For the Isles, it was their second consecutive win while the Rangers have now lost two straight. Coach Tom Renney was upset with the play of his power play which ended the game 0-for-4 and allowed a pair or shorthanded goals.

"Unacceptable performance," Renney said. "The power play let us down. Take responsibility for it. Power play structure, if people are committed to it and work hard at it, it can work. We are playing outside of what we have been teaching our guys."

Gordon, meanwhile, was thrilled with the penalty kill of his team. "I tell our penalty killers to be aggressive and take away time and space. I tell them if they have the opportunity to score a goal, then goal score a goal."

The Islanders will travel to Atlanta to play the Thrashers on Thursday while the Rangers host the Tampa Bay Lightning Thursday at Madison Square Garden.

NOTES

Sean Bergenheim was again sidelined due to what has now been described as a virus. There were no changes to the lineup.

Defenseman Freddy Meyer was placed on the injured list after the defenseman had surgery to repair a sports hernia.