Thirteen days into the season, it feels like the Rangers are already approaching the 2020-21 intersection.
Because it’s not simply the matter of four consecutive losses and a 1-4-1 record after Tuesday’s 3-2 defeat at Buffalo in a game where the score flattered the losers, it’s that there isn’t one there, there for the Rangers.
There is nothing for this team to hang its hat on, not a reservoir of confidence to exhaust, not a single athlete who seems capable of turning things back on a fruitful course. There are only flaws that act as signposts, both on the ice and on the bench.
Of the four consecutive single-goal defeats – first against the Devils and then a pair in Pittsburgh – this represented the team’s worst performance. And of the five total losses, two have come to the two teams in this newfangled division that failed to make it to the 24-team qualifying tournament last year. That would be the Devils and Sabers.
“At this point a loss is a loss is a loss. It doesn’t matter if you are close and do the right things, it does not matter if the other team is tilting the ice a little bit, it’s about finding ways to win, ”said Chris Kreider, who won his first of the year. to give the Blueshirts a 1-0 lead at 6:28 am that evaporated only 6:22 later. “We must hate losing in that room.
“We have to nip it in the bud now and come out and play the next game without doubts against Buffalo [Thursday] for the full 60 minutes. We have to show that we actually hate losing because we can talk about it all day long, but we have to publish it to the full 60. “
Again, despite Kreider’s early goal after a wonderful center feed from Pavel Buchnevich on the reunited 1A line with Mika Zibanejad in the center, the Rangers didn’t quite get what to expect from their top six. Artemi Panarin was arguably the biggest culprit, flipping pucks over repeatedly and failing on one-timers, but Zibanejad wasn’t much better.
“It’s an obvious question [about the top six] and the obvious answer is, ‘Yeah, we’re not getting enough of our top six,’ said a restless David Quinn
Zibanejad may still feel effects of missing the first week of training camp while infected with COVID-19 (No. 93 of course said this is not the case), but he has yet to assert himself during a half dozen matches.) What’s more, Zibanejad won just 6 out of 21 draws while losing a bunch cleanly, as the Blueshirts only won 17 out of 56 for a 30.3 percent success rate.
The top six didn’t pull its weight, the power play was kept off the board, the penalty-kill unit allowed the Sabers a few power-play goals, and Alex Georgiev couldn’t improve his team with the necessary crucial save. or two when the Rangers sank after Buffalo tied it 2-2 at 6:03 of the second period on Tobias Rieder’s breakaway just as a Blueshirt power game ended.
Eighty-eight seconds later, the Sabers were in the lead at 7:31 AM when Jack Eichel ripped one out of the slot by Georgiev on a power-play one-timer. The Rangers were generally somnambulant until the last minutes of the game before heading out into the cold night.
“It was really disappointing, because for the last four nights I thought we were mostly skating and competing for 60 minutes,” said the coach. “We get the goal and after that our whole mindset has changed. Hope plays and the cross ice passes back in, forcing play and flipping the puck inside the offensive blue line.
“Then we get the power play target [by K’Andre Miller] Bee [19:53] from the first period, but then they got that draw and our bank was demoralized. You could feel that there was just no life on our couch. We had more life in the third, but you are not going to win such games. “
We know. It is a very young team. But if the club is that mentally weak right now, it’s up to Quinn and his staff to fill in the blanks. The coaches are also part of the bench environment.
It was Jack Johnson who took the penalty that had little to do with the game that put the Sabers in power at 11:38 from the first on which Dylan Cozens knocked out Kreider’s previous score. The Rangers have allowed six power play goals. Johnson has been on the ice for three of them and in the box for two of them. Libor Hajek, maybe on Thursdays.
See, the sixth defender can’t be a scapegoat. You win as a team and you lose as a team. The problem is, the Rangers only lose as a team.