The Rangers have lived and died early in the season from one goal and one goal matches.
They were crushed again on Saturday night by both.
Sidney Crosby handed the dagger in overtime to lift the Penguins past the Rangers, 5-4, into the Garden.
Crosby’s winner, at 2:27 of extra time, came at the end of a long shift for Tony DeAngelo, Artemi Panarin and Mika Zibanejad, who looked exhausted after sitting on the ice for two minutes straight (DeAngelo just shied away) while the Penguins made multiple line changes.
But the Rangers lost the game in the third period, which they had entered a 4-3 lead after coming back from three separate one-goal backlogs. The Penguins toppled the ice during the last 20 minutes of regulation, leading to the fourth time in the past five games that the Rangers had blown a one-goal lead in the third period.
“It seemed like a lot of fun for them in the third period,” said a visibly frustrated Chris Kreider.
“It is a recurring phenomenon at the moment. We showed what we can do in spurts. We understand what we need to do to be successful, and then they increase the intensity a little bit in the third period there and all of a sudden we move away from it and start going east-west and non-advancing zones. You don’t win at the NHL level if you do. When it came to the third period, they went north, they put pucks behind our D, which is something we had done all night and successfully done all night and we were just off it. “
Jake Guentzel leveled the game halfway through the third at four o’clock with a goal that came on a second rebound attempt. Alexandar Georgiev (33 saves) had stopped the first two shots from close range but was unable to come up with a third save.
The Rangers were swept by the Penguins in a set of two games in Pittsburgh last week, including a shootout loss. In both games, the Rangers had taken a one-goal lead into the third period, but both saw it evaporate. Saturday was more of the same, as the Rangers played their sixth game in a row with one goal, with only one victory ahead.
“Probably as bad a period as we’ve played all year,” said coach David Quinn. “They hit us to every loose puck, they won every fight. … They were smarter and looked like a slightly hungrier team than we were in the third period. They just won a lot of foot races to lose pucks, they won battles and we were very soft around our net. “
The Rangers had come out strong and even after falling behind first, found an answer for the Penguins’ first three goals. Brendan Lemieux, Kevin Rooney (short-handed) and Kreider all scored an equalizer before Artemi Panarin gave the Rangers their first lead of the game, 4-3, in a power-play strike late in the second period.
Then came the third period, when the Rangers struggled to get pucks behind the Penguins’ defense and slowly saw another lead slip through their hands.
“That’s just winning hockey,” said Kreider. “No team in the league can just throw their sticks out and play from east to west trying to make their way to victories. You have to go north at some point. There is not enough space, there is not enough time. You have to make their D. You have to let them go 60 meters. [Instead], we flip pucks across the lines, flip pucks in the neutral zone and don’t let them dig out of corners. “