RANGERS ON THIN ICE
Lackluster effort leaves sour taste
O TTAWA — A bounce or two went against them again, the net-crashing craze that has become a staple of pulled-goaltender-six-on-five hockey cost them again, but make no mistake, the Rangers got what they deserved in Saturday’s 5-4 overtime Game 5 defeat to the Senators on Saturday.
The Blueshirts had way too many players who delivered C-minus efforts throughout this defeat that places them on the brink of second-round playoff extinction heading into Tuesday’s Game 6 at the Garden, when more diligence, commitment and passion would have given them a choke hold on the series.
They did not measure up against an Ottawa team that played as if their lives depended on this after having mailed in a pair of puny performances in Games 3 and 4 in New York. It wasn’t even close, despite how close the Blueshirts came to winning it.
For all of the combined 1,000plus games of playoff experience in the lineup and for all the situations this team has encountered the past six springs, the Rangers did not respond appropriately in this one.
“Nobody can come out of this game thinking they played well enough to win,” an angry Mats Zuccarello told The Post after Kyle Turris slipped a change of pace from the left side through Henrik Lundqvist to win it at 6:28 of OT. “To me, that’s what everyone should be feeling now. “We should have won this game.” Well, they certainly could have won this game, which they led 4-3 into the final 90 seconds of regulation before Derick Brassard struck back against the Empire that traded him by tying it off a mad scene in front at 18:34 of the third. Big Game Brass took advantage of an opportune of a series of bounces following a Lundqvist save on Clarke MacArthur’s left-wing whistler.
But they couldn’t pull it off. And though luck and bounces played a significant role in Big Game Brass’ heroics, there was nothing lucky about Erik Karlsson’s spectacu- lar diagonal feed to MacArthur through a wide open seam in the Rangers’ faulty coverage that triggered the sequence. It seemed as if Derek Stepan should have been there, but wasn’t.
Credit Karlsson, who turned in an imposing 31:09. Blame the Rangers, whose coach, Alain Vigneault suggested: “Maybe guys didn’t know the goaltender was coming, but there was less than two minutes, they’re down by a goal, so [they] should expect it. But maybe the guys got caught there not knowing.”
If so, t hat would have been emblematic of the lack of attention to detail that marked much of the afternoon for these Rangers, who had the Senators where they wanted them early and allowed them to escape, as if the Blueshirts were a team that had never been there before.
For after taking a 2-0 lead within 5:13 of the opening puck-drop against a shaky Craig Anderson, when Nick Holden got a soft one from the left side on the Blueshirts’ fourth shot, they were able to generate just nine shots over the ensuing 27:24. They were out-attempted 20-9 at even-strength in the first period and 15-5 over the final 14:47 when they might have put Ottawa away.
Ryan McDonagh struggled through his poorest performance of the postseason despite scoring the 3-3 goal late in the second period. Stepan had an ugly, ugly game. Rick Nash was unable to make much of an impact at all. Did you see Chris? Probably not, with Kreider barely in the picture. Dan Girardi had a rough game. J.T. Miller was ragged and both Marc Staal and Brendan Smith had issues. And Lundqvist was only so-so, which was far from good enough.
And if, by comparison, Zuccarello and Mika Zibanejad were somewhat less culpable, they weren’t good enough on a consistent basis, either, while a handful of Blueshirts including Jimmy Vesey, Jesper Fast, Michael Grabner and Nick Holden turned in unimpeachable efforts.
The Rangers, though, win as a team and lose as a team. And this team didn’t do enough to avoid defeat. It didn’t do enough to win on a day when victory would have put them on the verge of advancing to their third conference finals in the last four years and fifth in the last seven.
Incredibly, they were careless and lacked urgency. That should leave a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. It sure did in Zuccarello’s case.
“Every playoff game should be played with desperation. For me, I do play every playoff game with desperation,” said No. 36, who punctuated his words by thrusting his arm forward. “Now we have to be desperate the next game. That has to be everyone’s mindset.
“I don’t care who you are.”