NO BLUESHIRT XMAS
Tying goal waved off as Rangers fall to Maple Leafs at Garden:
On this Festivus night, the Rangers failed the feats of strength.
They sure tried down the stretch, wrestling with the Maple Leafs and at one point having a tying goal waved off, but two unsatisfactory periods couldn’t be overcome in this 3-2 home loss Saturday night.
As the lines were juggled, the bottom two defensive pairs switched and Mika Zibanejad got benched after one third-period shift, the Rangers started to show signs of life down by two goals and seemingly had an equalizer at 12:09 of the period.
It was Michael Grabner beating Frederik Andersen causing the Garden crowd to erupt after J.T. Miller had brought the Rangers within one just 44 seconds earlier. But the Maple Leafs challenged for offsides and video review showed that Kevin Hayes was indeed offsides on the opposite end of the play, nullifying the goal in what was a second straight loss for the Rangers (19-13-4) heading into the NHL’s three-day Christmas break.
“I’m not quite sure what he saw there,” Alain Vigneault said of Hayes. “He’s not even involved in the play at all. Probably the fact that Grabs had to deke that guy just got him and inch or two offsides, so obviously he didn’t do that on purpose.”
Miller’s goal came off a feed by Pavel Buchnevich from behind the net through Roman Polak’s legs. Miller began the game on the fourth line and switched with Buchnevich for the second period — during which Buchnevich barely played before both played together while Zibanejad rode the pine along with Paul Carey and Boo Nieves, who returned to the lineup with Jesper Fast out two-to-three weeks with a quad strain.
“I definitely thought the other nine guys were better,” is as far as Vigneault would go regarding benching Zibanejad for the third.
A penalty-laden first period saw the Maple Leafs take a 1-0 lead at 17:14 when the Rangers got caught for a never-ending shift in their own end following a failed power play. Three of the five players on the Rangers’ top power-play unit couldn’t get off the ice and logged shifts of at least three minutes: Kevin Shattenkirk (3:43), Zibanejad (3:01) and Mats Zuccarello (3:01), the last roughly minuteand-a-half spent chasing the puck in their own end before William Nylander’s goal.
Ryan McDonagh’s late delay-of-game penalty for flipping the puck over the glass resulted in a Toronto power play that carried over into the second period, and a onetime blast from Ron Hainsey with six seconds left in the man-advantage doubled the Leafs’ lead.
Less than two minutes later, Jimmy Vesey took advantage of a Frederik Andersen misplay at the side of his own net, Vesey pouncing on the puck and wrapping around into an open net to halve the Blueshirts’ deficit.
Then came the goal from the American wunderkind Auston Matthews, who returned to Toronto’s lineup after missing the previous six games with a concussion. After McDonagh and Nick Holden lost a puck
battle at the wall, Matthews was all alone in front and foiled a poke attempt by Henrik Lundqvist, rounding him for what turned out to be the winning goal.
“Obviously he’s the wrong guy to face one-on-one in front of the net,” Lundqvist, who made 34 saves, said of Matthews. “He had a really good game.”
Early in the third, Lundqvist appeared irate with referee Dean Morton after Nazem Kadri appeared to knock the puck out of Lundqvist’s glove after a save, giving Toronto another opportunity that necessitated another save.
“I had the puck in my glove, and he hits it from behind and the puck comes out, and they get another scoring chance. I feel like at least one of the four (officials) out there should be able to see that,” Lundqvist said.
Poor defensive play and puck management continue to be problem areas for the Rangers, who went into their Christmas break with two straight losses. “It’s a sour feeling,” McDonagh
said.