UGLY AS SEN'
Rangers deliver another dud, falling to struggling Ottawa
OTTAWA, Ont. — It shouldn’t have been so difficult, but the Rangers have made this season a study in what’s difficult.
Now they’re finding out about the pace at which momentum drains, with any good feeling that had existed being slowly bled out by a second straight loss, this one a 3-2 defeat to the Senators on Wednesday night at Canadian Tire Center.
“I feel like this is a game we should win,” goalie Henrik Lundqvist said, with the Senators having won just once in their previous 13 games and having lost an awful game in Buffalo on Tuesday night. “We’re just not in the right place.”
Maybe this was better than the Rangers (16-12-3) had played on Monday, a 2-1 shootout loss to the Stars at the Garden that was salvaged only by the heroics of backup goalie Ondrej Pavelec. And maybe this would be easier to swallow if it was the case of just one mistake — J.T. Miller losing his man on the first shift of the third period resulting in Zach Smith scoring the eventual game-winner for the Senators (10-13-7) just eight seconds into the period.
“It sucks, especially when it’s my guy,” Miller said. “Can’t set the tone for a period when you’re down a goal like that.”
But it was more than that. It was the Rangers being unable to successfully beat the Senators’ trap on the day that Ottawa coach Guy Boucher got an endorsement from his general manager, Pierre Dorion, saying that Boucher and his halting style aren’t going anywhere despite the struggles.
The Blueshirts remember the trap well from this past spring, when the Senators sent them home in the second round of the playoffs.
“It’s the way they play, 13-1, it’s not pretty to look at. We experienced it last year,” Lundqvist said. “But they got the win. It is a team where you have to be really smart with the puck.”
That is exactly where coach Alain Vigneault found fault — his players unable to make smart plays through the neutral zone, with turnovers such as Kevin Shattenkirk’s early in the first period that resulted in Bobby Ryan scoring just his second goal of the season at 4:01. It was the third shot of the game on Lundqvist, the ninth time this season he has given up a goal on one of the game’s first three shots.
“I think it had more to do with execution than confidence,” Vigneault said. “We gave up an early goal in the first, we gave up an early goal in the third. We know this team well, we know how they defend. There are some plays in front of you that you have to make, the first two goals, we didn’t make the plays through the neutral zone and they came back to make us pay.”
The Rangers had tied it, 1-1, when Michael Grabner got his team-leading 15th goal of the season at 3:57 of the second, finishing a great threaded pass from Mats Zuccarello. But when Brendan Smith lost his stick and then screened Lundqvist, it allowed Cody Ceci to make it 2-1 at 15:08 of the second.
The Rangers fought back from the 3-1 deficit as well, with Chris Kreider making a great play to set up Pavel Buchnevich’s 11th of the season at 4:40 of the third.
But it wasn’t enough, again, and now the Rangers have to regroup or they’re on the edge of another slippery downward slope.
“Obviously we wanted to come in here and get a win against a team that has been struggling, on a backto-back, all those things you want to take advantage of,” defenseman Marc Staal said. “It’s frustrating not to be able to do that. We just kind of got ourselves in a hole and weren’t able to dig ourselves out.”