With thirteen days of the season, it seems that the Rangers are already approaching the crossroads of 2020-21.
For it’s not just about four consecutive defeats and a 1-4-1 record after Tuesday’s 3-2 defeat in Buffalo, in a match where the scoreboard favored the losers, it’s not there, there for the Rangers.
There is nothing for this team to hang their hat on, no reliable reservoir to draw from, no single athlete who seems capable of twisting things back to a fruitful course. There are only faults to serve as a signal, both on the ice and on the bench.
Of the four consecutive defeats by a goal – first for the Devils and then for a pair in Pittsburgh – this represented the team’s weakest performance. And of the five general defeats, two came to the two teams in this innovative division for not having made the 24-team qualifying tournament last year. These would be demons and sabers.
“At this point, a loss is a loss. It doesn’t matter if you’re close and doing the right things, it doesn’t matter if the other team tilts the ice a bit, it’s all about finding ways to win, “said Chris Kreider, who scored his first of the year to give the Blueshirts a 1-0 lead at 6:28 that evaporated just 6:22 later. “We have to hate losing in that room.
“We have to nip in the bud now and go out and play the next game without a doubt against Buffalo [Thursday] for the full 60 minutes. We have to show that, in fact, we hate to lose, because we can talk about it all day, but we have to put it out for 60 years. “
Once again, despite Kreider’s opening goal in a wonderful central play by Pavel Buchnevich on the reunited Line 1A with Mika Zibanejad in the middle, the Rangers did not receive what they have every right to expect from their top six. Artemi Panarin may have been the biggest culprit, turning discs over and over and losing control in one-timers, but Zibanejad was not much better.
“It is an obvious question [about the top six] and the obvious answer is, ‘Yes, we are not getting enough of our top six’, for sure, ”said an unstable David Quinn
Perhaps Zibanejad is still feeling the effects of missing the first week of the training camp while infected with COVID-19 (# 93, of course, said that is not the case), but he still needs to assert himself through half a dozen matches.) Furthermore, Zibanejad won just 6 out of 21 draws, while losing a lot cleanly, as the Blueshirts won only 17 out of 56 for a “success” rate of 30.3%.
The top six were unsuccessful, power play was kept off the board, the penalty-kill unit allowed a pair of power-play goals for the Sabers and Alex Georgiev failed to elevate his team with the necessary crucial defense or two, when Rangers went down after Buffalo tied 2-2 at 6:03 of the second period in Tobias Rieder’s escape as soon as a Blueshirt power play had expired.
Eighty-eight seconds later, the Sabers were in the lead at 7:31 am, when Jack Eichel hit Georgiev in a one-timer power-play on the slot machine. The Rangers were generally sleepwalking until the last minutes of the match, before expiring on a cold night.
“It was very disappointing because for the past four nights I thought we were skating and competing for almost 60 minutes,” said the coach. “We reached the goal and then our whole mindset changed. Hope plays and cross-ice passes creep again, forcing moves and turning the puck inside the offensive blue line.
“So, we have the goal of power-play [by K’Andre Miller] in [19:53] of the first period, but then they got that equalizer and guy made our bank demoralized. You could feel that there was simply no life in our bank. We had more life in the third, but you will not win games like this. “
We know. It is a very young team. But if the club is so mentally fragile right now, then it’s up to Quinn and her team to fill in the blanks. Coaches are also part of the bench environment.
It was Jack Johnson who took the penalty that had little to do with the play that gave the Sabers the game at 11:38 am of the first, in which Dylan Cozens denied Kreider’s previous score. The Rangers allowed six power-play goals. Johnson was on the ice for three of them and in the box for two of them. Libor Hajek, maybe on Thursday.
Look, the sixth defender must not be a scapegoat. You win as a team and you lose as a team. The problem is that the Rangers are just losing as a team.