‘This one sucks’: Rangers try to explain brutal meltdown against Blue Jackets
At a time when the New York Rangers desperately needed points in one of their biggest games of the season, they instead gave up seven goals on home ice en-route to a 7-3 beatdown by the Columbus Blue Jackets at Madison Square Garden on Sunday.
A multitude of defensive breakdowns coupled with a lack of execution piled up quickly on the Rangers, who melted down repeatedly and reverted to some brutal defensive play, allowing seven even-strength goals in this latest loss that kept them from jumping into the first wild card in the Eastern Conference.
“When it did break down, it was bad,” Rangers coach Peter Laviolette said postgame. “There was guys right in front of (goalie Jonathan Quick) with no support and no help. You go back and look at all the goals, one of them was off a skate, a guy falls in a corner, a broken stick come back on the two-on-two. But everything could have been done differently and done better, it needs to be better inside of that.”
There’s no excuses when it comes to the way the Rangers lost on Sunday night. They battled back in dramatic fashion to tie the game 3-3 after Adam Fantilli scored a pair of goals 26 seconds apart to make it 3-1 Columbus early in the second period. The Rangers responded by scoring two short-handed goals on the same penalty kill, the first time that’s happened for New York since March 5, 2014.
That whiplash sequence, with goals by Braden Schneider and Chris Kreider 42 seconds apart, had The Garden rocking and the visiting team on its heels.
With a tie game on their hands and all of the momentum after that kill, the Rangers seemed primed to continue the push and work toward taking the lead. It was quite the opposite, however.
Columbus scored twice late in the period on goals by Mathieu Olivier at 17:03 and Dante Fabbro at 18:47 to blunt New York’s momentum.
Quick wasn’t great — overall allowing seven goals on 27 shots — but he was left high and dry by his teammates on these two goals, and others.
Olivier scored again in the third period and Fantilli finished the Rangers off with his third goal for his second career hat trick.
“The bang bang at the start of the second period, and then we fight back and get the two short-handed goals, now we’re in the game again,” explained Laviolette. “Then it’s right at the end of the period, bang bang again. Inside of that, there were those opportunities where we had looks … We didn’t capitalize. When we made it 3-3 we needed to grab the juice, get the fourth goal, and push the game in our direction. It didn’t happen.”
Related: Winners, losers from deflating loss Saturday against Senators
Rangers look to clean up mistakes on 3-game road trip
The Rangers did a good deal of damage to their playoff hopes between this defeat and a 4-3 overtime loss to the Ottawa Senators on Saturday. Earning one of a possible four points against the two teams right in front of them in the wild-card chase is just about as bad as it can get, but it’s how they lost that makes things even worse.
They’re just two points behind the Blues Jackets for the first wild card and one in arrears of the Senators for the second wild card. But they’ve lost three straight games (0-1-2) now, including blowing a pair of two-goals leads Saturday before the debacle on home ice Sunday.
“I don’t think the execution was good on us coming out of the zone,” Laviolette explained. “I think we just kind of threw it away. That led to offense, that led to goals as well. We weren’t clean. We have to be cleaner than that coming out of our zone. It led to chances and goals against.”
The focus now turns toward cleaning up their mistakes, and getting the next set of available points on a three-game road trip that opens Tuesday in Winnipeg against the League-best Jets.
“It’s a really important road trip,” J.T. Miller said. “We don’t have much time to sit around and keep our heads down. We have to be ready. We have nine games in 15 or 16 days, so we don’t have time to pout. You’d like to win them all, but this team over the last little bit has been really nice. You want to win them all, but it’s not good enough. We’ll be better next game.”
That seemed to be the resounding message in the room following the brutal loss on home ice. Focus on the next two points. A tall task at hand considering the Rangers face off against the Jets, who’ve been atop the standings all season.
“This one sucks,” said a stone-faced K’Andre Miller. “It’s going to sting for a little bit. Try to turn the page as quick as we can, we got a lot of games to finish this stretch.”
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