Lehtonen hurt in Thrashers’ victory

Thrashers captain Ilya Kovalchuk shouted in the locker room during the second intermission Thursday night. So did Eric Boulton and a lot of their teammates.

They knew they were playing lousy hockey. They knew they were capable of something better. They had lost their starting goalie and fallen behind by three goals, and they knew they weren’t going to get anywhere feeling sorry for themselves or blaming the referees.

“We just yelled at each other a little bit, got the negative energy out of us,” Kovalchuk said.

And then they went out and beat the New York Rangers 5-4 in a shootout to complete one of the wildest games of the season.

Kovalchuk scored a goal and assisted on two others as the Thrashers rallied from a 4-1 deficit.

Johan Hedberg replaced the injured Kari Lehtonen to begin the second period and, after a rough start, shut out the Rangers in the third period, the overtime and the six shootout rounds.

Todd White scored the tying goal with 6:50 left in regulation and scored the only goal of the shootout.

Surprised to see so much life from a team that has been eliminated from contention for a playoff berth? Perhaps you haven’t been paying attention.

“The last 20 games here we’ve shown a lot of character,” White said. “We don’t give up.”

The Rangers are fighting for a playoff berth and stand seventh in the Eastern Conference. Eight teams make it, and ninth-place Florida is only four points behind New York.

The Thrashers are in 13th place, but they didn’t play like it from the final minute of the second period through the end of the shootout.

“When we work, we can be one of the best teams in the NHL,” Kovalchuk said. “When we’re not working, we are the worst.”

Starting goalie Kari Lehtonen suffered an undisclosed upper-body injury when knocked into his net by Sean Avery. Lehtonen played the final five minutes of the first period after the hit but didn’t return from the locker room to start the second period.

Thrashers coach John Anderson said he had no information about Lehtonen’s injury.

“He might be playing Saturday,” Anderson said.

The Thrashers gave the Rangers 10 power plays, eight in the first 31 minutes.

Power-play goals by Nik Antropov and Chris Drury started a run of three consecutive Rangers goals that broke open a 1-1 game. Markus Naslund made it 4-1 17:59 into the second period.

From there, though, it was all Thrashers. Kovalchuk scored with less than 21 seconds left in the second period, then continued the offensive surge in the third.

He assisted on Colby Armstrong’s backhander off Rangers goalie Stephen Valiquette and White’s shot from the slot. In between, Avery put a knee-on-knee hit on Kovalchuk, to which Kovalchuk responded by bashing Avery with his stick.

Valiquette stopped Bryan Little, Slava Kozlov, Kovalchuk and Eric Perrin in the shootout before facing White, whose first plan was to shoot low to the blocker side.

“I saw him starting to drop, so I tried to go high glove,” White said. It worked.