Leavin’ Loss Vegas
AP LAS VEGAS — The Rangers left their first regular-season trip to Vegas with their pockets empty.
Alain Vigneault scratched Pavel Buchnevich and Brendan Smith, Kevin Hayes suffered a lower-body injury and the Blueshirts stumbled into their bye week with a 2-1 loss Sunday night to the Golden Knights.
Hayes appeared to get hurt on a hit by Nate Schmidt into the end boards early in the first period and played only 3:01. He will be examined further in New York.
The Rangers (22-15-5) have won three of their last eight games and over their last seven games have scored just 11 goals, excluding goals awarded for shootout victories.
So it was surprising, then, that Buchnevich was scratched as he has the thirdmost points on the team with 26. Vigneault often preaches the importance of playing an all-around, 200-foot game, and Buchnevich has had his share of struggles while also scoring just once in his last 14 games.
But the 22-year-old is one of the team’s most productive and skilled players, the kind of player one would think could eventually help a club break out of its scoring funk. Instead, Buchnevich came out as Mats Zuccarello returned from illness and rookie Vinni Lettieri played a second straight game, while Steven Kampfer played for the first time since Nov. 28.
“I just felt that for (Sunday) it was the right thing to do,” Vigneault said regarding Buchnevich’s scratch, a line he repeated on a follow-up question.
In his seventh start of the season, backup goalie Ondrej Pavelec made 32 saves, 14 of which came during the second period.
The middle 20 minutes were incredibly sluggish for the Rangers, who had trouble holding onto pucks and gave up a number of odd-man rushes against a very quick Golden Knights team — which continues to light up the NHL in its inaugural season, leading the Western Conference.
The deciding goal came 8:58 into the third period when nobody was even in the vicinity of William Karlsson, who raced up the right wing and finished off an easy one-timer.
Mika Zibanejad’s goal 13:05 into the first gave the Blueshirts a brief lead. Roughly four minutes later, James Neal capitalized off a Rangers defensive-zone turnover, ringing one off the post and in to tie it.
It’s been much tougher sledding for the Rangers over the last couple of weeks after the roughly month-and-a-half stretch during which they stabilized and pulled themselves into playoff contention. There’s a recognition that when they come back from their break for Friday’s practice followed by a weekend back-toback against division opponents, they have to reach another level.
“That’s 100 percent true,” Brady Skjei said. “We need to start ramping it up here. Each point is so big in our division.”