Rangers punished by Caps
THE RANGERS locker room remained closed 10 minutes longer than usual Sunday night for a players-only meeting following a listless 4-1 loss to the Washington Capitals at the Garden.
Coach Alain Vigneault was not impressed.
“That’s just talking,” Vigneault said at the podium. “You can talk all you want. You need to have those words become actions on the ice, and the right type of actions. Right now, we’re a .500 hockey team. When the other team scores a goal, we don’t seem to have much of a push. I firmly believe that this group is much better than that, but we’re not showing it.”
Expect Vigneault wheel of healthy scratches to keep spinning until the Rangers (15-15-1) stop spiraling. Are major changes coming? How about Vigneault’s answer to whether his team has enough grit:
“With the personnel we have right now, we need to play a smart, high-percentage, good puck movement game,” Vigneault said. “If we do that, we can be very effective. That’s the type of personnel we have at this time.” Paging Glen Sather. Sunday night, veteran center Dominic Moore was the latest Blueshirt to watch from the luxury boxes, but Benoit Pouliot’s return was not designed to be the difference, and it wasn’t, even though he scored with 1:53 remaining to prevent a shutout.
Early i n the second period, Pouliot’s failed clear resulted in defenseman Steve Oleksy’s goal and the second Caps tally in 25 seconds. Jason Chimera had scored 2:28 in after Rangers defenseman John Moore was shoved off the puck behind the net by Caps forward Martin Erat.
Asked if battles for the puck are about effort or fundamentals, Rangers veteran center Brad Richards pulled no punches about his disgust in his own play and that of his teammates.
“No, that’s ‘want,’” Richards said. “Half the game out there was hoping: Hope we win a battle, hope we get a puck, hope the other guy gets it to me, hope something just falls on my stick and I get an open net. I don’t know why we need to talk about that. If you watch any type of hockey in the last 10 years, that’s not how things are going to work.”
The Rangers fell to 5-7-1 at the Garden and dropped to 1-13-0 when their opponent scores first. They also have lost three times in the last 11 games when they themselves score first. They are just 5-4-1 against Metropolitan Division opponents following Saturday night’s 4-3 overtime defeat to the Devils and Sunday’s loss to Washington (16-12-2).
“We have to respond,” captain Ryan Callahan said. “It’s not good enough at home.”
Their franchise-record ninegame home stretch continues Tuesday night against the Nashville Predators, and it will get no easier with defenseman and alternate captain Marc Staal sidelined for an unknown period of time with “neck issues” and “symptoms” that could be related to a concussion.
The players sitting in the room Sunday, though, knew they need to correct this slide quickly.
“There’s no point in looking over your shoulder or trying to find an answer from different things,” said Henrik Lundqvist (32 saves), who also was beaten on a Mikhail Grabovski penalty shot and an Eric Fehr deflection. “Just go to yourself, and try to be better.”