This type of performance is not going to convince anyone in the Rangers’ front office they shouldn’t be sellers come the Feb. 26 trade deadline.
The Blueshirts returned from the weeklong All-Star break and were crushed by the Maple Leafs, 4-0, on Thursday night at the Garden. It was a woeful performance that got Henrik Lundqvist pulled for the second time in as many starts and saw the Rangers shut out by backup goalie Curtis McElhinney.
“It’s hard, you feel like you let people down when you don’t get the job done,” said Lundqvist, who lasted just 23:05 after giving up four goals on 13 shots. “You’re here to play obviously for the group in here, but also the fans. And we want to make sure we play strong games moving forward. Personally, I just have to start with myself.”
Lundqvist could not bail out the Rangers (25-21-5), who continued to make back-breaking mistakes in crucial areas. Turning the puck over the way they did is fuel for a team like the Maple Leafs (30-18-5), who are fast and skilled and often capitalize on other teams’ mistakes.
Which is turning into the opposite of the Rangers. Even the scant chances they did get — just five shots on net in the first period, followed by seven in the second — they couldn’t get anything past McElhinney, who finished with 25 saves and his second shutout of the season. Meanwhile Lundqvist was peppered with grade-A chances, just as understudy Ondrej Pavelec was as he stopped all 19 shots he faced over the final 36:55.
“When you play against a fast team, you can’t play into their transition. It was on us,” said Rick Nash, who looked like the only forward going with four shots on net while raising his stock on the trade market for the pending unrestricted free agent. “We turned the puck over too many times. We didn’t get the puck deep at their blue line and their transition game came in back on top of us.”
It seemed an apt description on the eve of Groundhog Day, because the Rangers have been saying the same things for a long time, now 6-10-1 over their past 17 as the postseason picture slides out of the grasp. It was the same song and dance during their 1-3-0 Western trip that preceded the break, with big-time mistakes rendering any other good work meaningless.
“We talked about it yesterday, about trying to eliminate the big grade-A chances and I think tonight, again, they had a couple of them that resulted in goals,” said captain Ryan McDonagh, whose play has hardly insured his future on Broadway. “As far as odd-man rushes and things we can control, that’s what is disappointing for sure because you have a couple days of practice like that and you talk about things and you talk about getting on the same page, your structure. We let ourselves off the hook there as far as giving them too much time and space.”
see also
Rangers newest addition shows exactly why they have to sell
Just as Cody McLeod stepped into his role as designated…
It started early, when McDonagh made a weak clearing attempt and rookie defenseman Justin Holl scored his second goal in as many career NHL games 8:42 into the first. It was followed by James van Riemsdyk getting enough room to slide one through Lundqvist’s legs at 15:23 to take a 2-0 lead into the second.
And just 52 seconds into the middle frame, Patrick Marleau was left open and beat Lundqvist stick-side from the slot, followed by Zach Hyman getting a clean look in front and lifting a backhand to make it 4-0 at 3:05 of the second.
That was it for Lundqvist, and that was it for the Rangers. Now the team that is 8-12-2 on the road is off to Nashville and Dallas, and the picture going into the deadline is getting clearer — even if the Rangers can’t embrace what it looks like.
“The desperation,” Lundqvist said, “needs to be there now every night.”