Rangers coach believes defense needed ‘more attitude’ in loss to Capitals
The New York Rangers 5-3 loss to the Washington Capitals on Tuesday night was a flat-out ugly performance. The Rangers were heavily outplayed, outshot 46-19, and put up their worst outing of the young season.
New York’s defense struggled big-time against Alex Ovechkin and the Capitals, falling behind 3-1 just nine minutes into the game and failing to fully recover. Two of those goals were courtesy of Ovechkin, who’s been a thorn in the Rangers side for nearly two decades.
When asked if the Rangers are defending hard enough to begin the season, Rangers coach Peter Laviolette’s answer was very simple.
“Tonight, definitely not,” he said. “We needed to defend much better than what we did, with much more attitude than what we did.”
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The Rangers were giving up chances left and right, and were out-chanced by the Capitals 48-21 in all situations according to Natural Stat Trick. In high-danger situations, New York was out-chanced 25-10. Simply put, the Capitals appeared to want it more.
It was bad enough for Laviolette to split up the top defense pairing of Adam Fox and K’Andre Miller for the first time this season. Fox was on the ice for nine chances for, 12 against, and two high-danger chances for, seven against. Miller was even worse. He was on the ice for five chances for, 16 against, and zero high-danger chances for, seven against.
“It was off the mark,” Laviolette said of the pairing.
In an attempt to shore up some defensive lapses, he returned to the mainstay pairs of seasons past, reuniting Ryan Lindgren with Fox, and Miller with Jacob Trouba. Still, it was too little too late as the Rangers were unable to tie the game, which was only close thanks to Igor Shesterkin’s 41 saves. Without him, the score would have been much more lopsided.
The Capitals expected goals for was a whopping 8.97, while the Rangers were lucky to get three, with an expected goals for of only 2.35.
“I think it’s just winning more one-on-one puck battles,” center Vincent Trocheck said postgame. “They won the majority of those tonight, and that’s what kept them in our end. There were more breakdowns that started on the walls (or) turnovers by us at the blue line.”
While the start to the season has been overall solid for the Rangers, they’ve now lost two of their past three games, and the effort shown on Tuesday was more than enough to warrant concern.
It will be interesting to see what Laviolette decides to do for New York’s next game against the Ottawa Senators on Friday. Does he give Miller and Fox another chance or keep the defense pairs as they were last season? It is hard to blame it all on the defenseman when the whole team was outplayed, but they certainly did not do themselves any favors.
Nonetheless, the Rangers will quickly wipe this one from memory and move on, beginning the month of November focused on what’s ahead.
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