Rangers ‘got to find a way to win at home’ after 7th straight loss at MSG
Madison Square Garden has turned into a house of horrors for the New York Rangers. Not only can’t they win on home ice, they can’t even score a goal.
“I think we’re just playing like a different team home and away,” defenseman Adam Fox said after a 5-0 loss to the New York Islanders on Saturday dropped them to 0-6-1 at MSG this season. “Got to figure it out and got to find a way to get wins at home, because it’s hurting us right now.
“We’ve talked enough about it. We’ve just got to find a way to win at home.”
The loss dropped the Rangers to 7-7-2 overall, with the Nashville Predators coming to town on Monday night. Though the Rangers look like Stanley Cup contenders on the road, where they are an NHL-best 7-1-1, their performance at home is another story. They’ve been shut out five times in seven games at The Garden, joining the long-defunct 1928-29 Pittsburgh Pirates as the only other team in League history to shoot so many blanks so quickly at home.
Of the six goals they’ve scored on Garden ice, all but one came in a 6-5 overtime loss to the then-winless San Jose Sharks on Oct. 23.
“We’ve got to find a way to score,” said forward Mika Zibanejad, who rang the crossbar in the first period Saturday when the game was still scoreless, and had two excellent chances during a second-period power play.
“We’re aware of it and it’s frustrating not to be able to get a win at home. You want to build a feeling for teams coming in here; it’s going to be tough, but obviously, we haven’t.”
The most recent home-ice loss followed an all-too-common script: the Rangers start well but can’t score, make a couple of defensive mistakes that wind up in their net, and spend the rest of the night unsuccessfully chasing the game. On Saturday, the Islanders turned a pair of defensive boo-boos into first-period goals off 2-on-1 rushes, and never looked back.
“More of the same for us at home,” Fox said. “Good start and got away from it, and then odd-man rushes and not close to where we should be at.”
Home losing streak, now at 7 games, starting to wear on Rangers
The losses in front of their home fans are starting to wear on the Rangers.
“Yeah, we’re humans. It’s hard,” captain J.T. Miller said. “We all care. It’s not like it’s an effort-based thing.
“It’s frustrating. We’ve had some good nights at home and some that weren’t. We kind of shot ourselves in the foot today.”
Coach Mike Sullivan admitted he doesn’t know why the Rangers are like two different teams, depending on where they play. The clunker against the Islanders came 24 hours after a superb performance in a 4-1 road victory against the Detroit Red Wings.
“I watched a team last night play in Detroit that had a solid team game, that had a lot of collective effort and cooperative play out there,” Sullivan said Saturday. “We’ve won a lot of games on the road with the same game plan, with the same concept, so I know when we play the game a certain way we’re competitive and we beat some really good teams in the process.
“I wish I could put my finger on the struggles that we’ve had at home to this point, but what I do know is we’ve got to work through it together, and we’ll certainly do that.”
Like his players, Sullivan is flabbergasted — and frustrated — at the difference in the Rangers’ home and road performances.
“If it doesn’t wear on you, something’s wrong,” said Sullivan, who’s still searching for his first win on the home bench at The Garden, with the Rangers set to host the struggling Predators (5-8-4). “That’s the way I look at it. It’s wearing on all of us. We want to pride ourselves in being a good team at home.
“We want to compete hard for the fan base that supports us. So I don’t think there’s any question it’s wearing on guys.”
