Thirteen days into the season, it feels like the Rangers are already approaching the crossroads of 2020-21.
Because it’s not just four consecutive losses and a 1-4-1 record after Tuesday’s 3-2 defeat at Buffalo in a game in which the score flattered the losers, but it doesn’t exist there, there for the Rangers.
There is nothing for this team to hang its hat on, no reliable tank to shoot from, no single athlete who seems able to turn things around on a fruitful course. There are only defects that act as indicators, both on the ice and on the bench.
Of the four consecutive defeats with a single goal – first to the devils then a pair to Pittsburgh – this was the lowest performance of the team. And out of the five overall losses, two came to the two teams in this newly defeated division for not having made the qualifying tournament with 24 teams last year. These would be Devils and Sabers.
“Right now, a loss is a loss. It doesn’t matter if you’re close and do the right thing, it doesn’t matter if the other team tilts the ice a bit, it’s about finding ways to win, “said Chris Kreider, who marked his first year to give Blueshirts a 1- lead. 0 at 6:28 which evaporated only 6:22 later. ”We must hate to get lost in that room.
“We have to freeze him right now and go out and play a game without a doubt the next one against Buffalo [Thursday] for the full 60 minutes. We have to show that I actually hate loss, because we can talk about it all day, but we have to put it there for 60 years. ”
Once again, despite Kreider’s early goal from a wonderful cross from Pavel Buchnevich’s cross on line 1A reunited with Mika Zibanejad in the middle, the Rangers did not get what they were expected to expect from the top six. Artemi Panarin may have been the biggest culprit, repeatedly turning the puck over and failing at once, but Zibanejad wasn’t much better.
“It’s an obvious question [about the top six] and the obvious answer is, “Yeah, we’re not getting enough of the top six, for sure,” said a stranger, David Quinn.
Zibanejad may still feel the effects of the lack of the first week of training camp while he is infected with COVID-19 (No. 93, of course, said that is not the case), but he has not yet stated through dozen more.) Moreover, Zibanejad won just 6 of 21 draws while losing a pile cleanly, as Blueshirts won just 17 of 56 for a 30.3 percent “success rate”. ”.
The first six did not gain weight, the power play was kept off the board, the penalty unit killed allowed a pair of Sabers power play goals, and Alex Georgiev could not lift the team with the necessary crucial save or two when the Rangers gave up after Buffalo tied 2-2 at 6:03 of the second period on Tobias Rieder’s escapade, just as a Blueshirt power piece had expired.
Eighty-eight seconds later, the Sabers were in the lead at 7:31, when Jack Eichel snatched one from Georgiev on a single power play in the slot. The Rangers were generally sleepy until the last minutes of the match before expiring on the cold night.
“It was very disappointing, because in the last four nights we thought we were skating and competing for the most part for 60 minutes,” said the coach. “We achieve the goal and then our whole mentality changed. Hope is at stake and the ice crossings have crept in again, forcing the games and turning the puck inside the offensive blue line.
“Then we get the goal of the power game [by K’Andre Miller] to [19:53] from the first period, but then they achieved that binding goal and the boy made the bank democracy. You could feel that our bank had no life. I had more life in the third, but you will not win such games. ”
We know. It’s a very young team. But if the club is so mentally fragile right now, then Quinn and her staff need to fill in the blanks. Coaches are also part of the environment on the bench.
Jack Johnson was the one who took the penalty that didn’t have much to do with the game that gave Sabers the power of the game at 11:38 from the first that Dylan Cozens denied Kreider’s previous score. The Rangers allowed six power goals. Johnson was on the ice for three of them and in the box for two of them. Libor Hajek, maybe Thursday.
Look, the sixth defender shouldn’t be a scapegoat. You win as a team and you lose as a team. The problem is that the Rangers only lose as a team.