Rangers slapped on wrist
Zuccarello is injured, Torts irked in defeat
THE RANGERS cannot replace the creativity of winger Mats Zuccarello, who fractured his left wrist in the first period of Friday night’s 4-1 loss to the Sabres at the Garden. But they can control their defensive effort, which John Tortorella said was lacking after three Buffalo oddman rushes hung Henrik Lundqvist out to dry. “It may be the effort on that fourth (opposing player) coming back is a problem— well, I know it is,” Tortorella said after the Rangers’ seven-game home stand ended with a thud and a 4-3-0 record. “That’s not just waiting for pucks offensively, it means getting above the puck in the offensive zone and defending first. We’ve lost a little bit of that.”
That’s not to say the Rangers weren’t trying. They trailed only 2-1 with 6:41 to play, but Buffalo defenseman Christian Ehrhoff laid inside the crease to make back-to-back saves on Marian Gaborik at the doorstep, and Marc Staal’s hard pinch into the zone left tyler ennis alone on an odd-man rush to bury the first of two third-period transition goals for the Sabres.
“It’s not in our game to give up odd-man rushes, and we talked about having back pressure and staying in the middle as defenseman, but for whatever reason we just didn’t have numbers back tonight,” Rangers defense manry an mcdonagh said.
Tortorella, though, said the Sabres’ second goal — scored by Drew Stafford with 6:17 remaining in the second to make it 2-1 — “kills us.” That odd-man rush was a result of a turnover by John Mitchell, who was benched for the rest of the game and ended up playing only 2:24 more than Zuccarello, who broke his wrist when he blocked jordan Leopold’s shot with 11:12 remaining in the firstperiod.
“It (stinks),” Mcdonagh said of the injury to Zuccarello, who had injected life into the Rangers’ power play and tallied three points since being called up from the AHL on March11. “he came in here and added an element that we hadn’t seen all year. He’s worked really hard down there in Hartford to make his way back here. It’s been a tough year on him. I feel for the guy. We’re gonna miss him on the ice and miss him around the team for sure.”
With the Blueshirts trailing 1-0 early in the second period, rookie defense man Tim Erixon recorded his first nhl point with an assist on Brian Boyle’s goal that tied it at 9:32, the other helper going to Artem Anisimov off a Boyle faceoff win. But the Blueshirts (46-21-7, 99 points) failed to pick up a point, opening the door a bit further for the surging Penguins (46-21-6, 98), who now have a game in hand and are charging hard for the Eastern Conference’s No. 1 seed. The rangers have eight regular-season games remaining, beginning Saturday night in toronto against the leafs.
“It was pretty obvious the odd-man rushes killed us tonight,” Lundqvist said. “It’s tough when they can walk in and kind of pick their corners.”