They can’t all be Habs, Wings and Penguins.
Points are not discounted in the NHL, and the Rangers’ victories against Montreal, Detroit (twice) and Pittsburgh each counted for two points in the standings. That, plus the single point the Blueshirts achieved in an overtime loss to Utah, had them riding high at 5-0-1 heading into Thursday’s early-season Garden showdown with Cup champion Florida.
And the Rangers took a belly flop against the club that ended their season in the Eastern final. They downplayed the match at the morning skate and played like it was just another game against another middling or lousy opponent. It wasn’t.
The Blueshirts were a flatline when emotion was required. They played a vanilla game when rocky road was necessary. There was an absence of physicality. If I were an anonymous poster on a message board, I’d go into a daily rant about the marginalization of Matt Rempe, scratched for the fifth time in seven games, but you should have gotten my point by now.
Update: There will be no daily rants about scratching Rempe, for No. 73 was assigned to the Wolf Pack following the match. Maybe someone in the organization will explain what happened in the offseason that changed the hierarchy’s (and/or coaching staff’s) opinion of the winger. If I tell you one more time that I don’t get it — and don’t get it at all — I will sound like one of those single-issue message board posters.
But back to this one.
“It seemed like we didn’t have the pop we needed to beat that team, I would agree with that,” head coach Peter Laviolette said. “That’s on us. We have to be better than that.
“They had more jump than us, they were quicker on the rush, they added the third man and the fourth man on the rush all night, and we didn’t catch them. We weren’t there to defend it.”
There are so few big games that merit a red circle on the calendar. This one did. At least, this one should have. Maybe the Rangers were just being too cool for school by downplaying this one. They were like Taylor Fritz pretending the U.S. Open final was just another match before being destroyed in straight sets by Jannik Sinner.
“Everything tonight goes into a bag where it wasn’t good enough,” Laviolette said. “You can talk about five-on-five play, the offense, the defense, the power play, the penalty kill.
“I wouldn’t say that that’s who we’ve shown to be so far in the season, but that’s what happened tonight.”
The Rangers came into the game with a 20-7 advantage in five-on-five goals over their first six games, piling up six against Montreal and five against Pittsburgh. They entered the match 6-for-19 with the man advantage. On Thursday, the Blueshirts were outscored 3-1 at five-on-five and went 0-for-4 on the power play.
Mika Zibanejad, who seemed on the outside a tad too often, talked about the power play itself being kept too often to the outside, reduced to rimming the puck around. That was a fair analysis. Is this the time when someone wants to remind folks that the power play was 1-for-15 in the conference final? Didn’t think so.
The Rangers were caught flat-footed out of the gate, yielding a pair of goals within the first 2:42 after coverage breakdowns in the defensive zone, the first by Alexis Lafreniere, whose offensive brilliance this month — No. 13 scored a beauty in front of the net for the lone Ranger goal in this one — has been counterbalanced by occasional walkabouts in his own end.
Last year, the Lafreniere-Vincent Trocheck-Artemi Panarin line was on for 54 Rangers goals and 39 against, a 58.06 percent. While explosive this year, the unit has been on for six goals for and six goals against. That’s not the kind of tradeoff the Blueshirts are willing to make, even if Igor Shesterkin continues to shine as the team’s brightest star.
The Chris Kreider-Zibanejad-Reilly Smith unit has been on for three goals scored and three goals against, yielding two with a minus-two in this defeat. That is not good enough for this line, either. Tit for tat at five-on-five is not good enough for the club’s most talented players.
The imbalance at five-on-five has been constructed by the bottom six. The Will Cuylle-Filip Chytil-Kaapo Kakko line has been on for seven goals scored and none against while the Adam Edstrom-Sam Carrick-Jonny Brodzinksi unit has been on for two for and none against.
Yes, contenders need to be able to roll four lines, but there is no model in which the top six play even while the bottom six clean up. This is not sustainable.
The Rangers were on a joy ride until Thursday. Not anymore. They met the enemy and were still not good enough. Maybe next time.