PRED' ON ARRIVAL
Rangers can’t get away with same lackluster performance
This time they were not able to get away with it when they got away from their game.
“We played a game the other night [in Buffalo] where it was more wide open, more space, less physical and we convinced ourselves that we were going to play a bunch of teams like that and we could play more wide open,” Chris Kreider said after the Rangers were beaten 1-0 by Nashville at the Garden on Sunday. “We didn’t play particularly well the other night and won and we carried that into this game.
“We weren’t getting into enough battles, we weren’t winning enough battles, they were finishing all their checks, they were winning all their battles. It took us 20 minutes to figure that out. It just can’t happen.”
The first-period effort was dreadful, the Rangers went a stretch of 10:24 without generating a shot, never mind a chance, but it took the team far longer than 20 minutes to get fully engaged in this one, even after Philip Tomasino recorded the game’s only goal at 1:44 of the second period.
Indeed, it took Jacob Trouba’s huge hit on Luke Kunin down the left-wing wall at 16:29 of the second period to ignite the Blueshirts, who did for the most part carry the play thereafter but could not beat Juuse Saros.
“I thought there was a little more energy in the building for sure,” said Trouba, who has unleashed three throwback hits in the last four games. “I think as the game progressed we started playing better, some of it was a factor of them protecting the lead but I thought we skated better as the game went on.
“It was kind of a midpoint, I guess, but I thought it was kind of progressing that way anyway.”
Asked if he heard the crowd chanting his name, the defenseman said, “A little bit, I couldn’t make it out. I thought it said, ‘Igor.’ ’’
Head coach Gerard Gallant seemed as dissatisfied with his team’s performance as he has all year, saying, “I didn’t like any of the game, to be honest with you. We played too soft, we didn’t play a hard enough game. It was a man’s game and we didn’t play it.”
Gallant juggled line combinations in the third period that had essentially remained intact for the previous eight games. And he benched Alexis Lafreniere, who got just 9:18 for the match that included two shifts in the third period.
Lafreniere did not get on for the final 10:14, during which time Gallant had Filip Chytil between Kevin Rooney and Barclay Goodrow and elevated Julien Gauthier up for a couple of top-six spins. Indeed, it was Gauthier — not Chytil, not Lafreniere, not Kaapo Kakko, who himself got only 3:23 in the third and just 12:08 overall — who was on for the final 1:34 as the extra attacker after Alexandar Georgiev vacated the net.
“I just wanted to give him a seat,” Gallant said when asked about Lafreniere. “He wasn’t alone.”
The Rangers had been riding high with seven straight victories before they were buried by the Avalanche at home on Wednesday. They escaped with the minimalist 2-1 victory in Buffalo on Friday before this. So, three consecutive subpar efforts for the team that has scored four goals at fiveon-five through this stretch that marks the first time this season the Rangers have lost two out of three in regulation.
There was a push late in the second after Trouba put his right shoulder into Kunin, Saros denying Mika Zibanejad on a close-in
backhand that might have represented the Rangers’ best chance at even strength. The Blueshirts carried the momentum into the third period and manufactured a glorious opportunity to tie it, but Saros made a spectacular doorstep save on Ryan Strome.
But though they carried the playe, the Rangers never really came all that close again against a now 17-10-1 Nashville team without both Ryan Johansen and Matt Duchene.
“It changed a little bit,” Gallant said of the effect of the juggling. “But it wasn’t enough.”
No, it was not. And now, with a back-toback coming up in Colorado and Arizona on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively, perhaps the Rangers will recognize that less than their best won’t be enough as the season progresses.