Rangers unable to muster any kind of offensive attack in loss to Nashville

NASHVILLE — It was bad enough that the Rangers were without captain J.T. Miller (upper-body injury) for Sunday night’s game against the Nashville Predators. But at game time, it turned out they also were minus two other forwards, Matt Rempe and Gabe Perreault, because of illness.

Without those three, the Rangers seemed discombobulated, mustering little threat offensively. Goaltender Jonathan Quick gave them a chance by stopping 30 of the 31 shots he faced, but he couldn’t win the game by himself. The Rangers were outshot 32-17 and lost, 2-1, at Bridgestone Arena.

To their credit, the Rangers (18-16-4) refused to blame their performance on a depleted lineup, which had only 11 healthy forwards and thus had to go with an 11-forward, seven-defenseman configuration.

“Yeah, it sucks not having everybody,’’ forward Vincent Trocheck said. “It’s obviously a tough spot, back-to-back [after playing Saturday], and then guys are getting sick and guys go down. But I mean, that doesn’t affect how we play with pride. If there’s anything to take away from today, we didn’t play with pride. It just looked [expletive] dead.’’

Filip Forsberg scored at 10:44 of the second period and Steven Stamkos scored into an empty net at 19:12 of the third to put the Predators (15-16-4) up 2-0. Jonny Brodzinski whacked in a loose puck with 35.9 seconds left to spoil Justus Annunen’s shutout bid.

“It’s disappointing because we had a couple of really high-character wins the last couple of games,’’ coach Mike Sullivan said. “And these guys have worked extremely hard. And we knew this was going to be a tough game going into it, but it doesn’t make any excuses for the lack of execution.’’

Sullivan said the Rangers did not play well and did not play smart.

“We didn’t go tape-to-tape with [passes]. We were late everywhere,’’ he said. “When you have these nights . . . you’ve got to recognize how to manage the game. You can’t beat yourself. You’ve got to manage the puck. You’ve got to make sure you force them to play goal line to goal line. You can’t give them easy offense.

“We gave them easy offense. We didn’t manage the puck. We didn’t make any plays. We made high-risk plays. We turned it into a track meet. It’s not a recipe for success.’’

Coming off a shootout win over the Philadelphia Flyers on Saturday, the Rangers were playing their seventh back-to-back set of the season. They are winless (0-6-1) when playing on a second consecutive day.

“Yeah, it’s concerning,’’ Trocheck said. “Everybody has back-to-backs. It’s tiring, but everybody does it. Someone’s gonna come out a winner. They played yesterday [Nashville beat Toronto on Saturday], and they just played harder than us. We’ve got to be able to be professional. Prepare for the game. We have to be better. We have to try harder. We have to have more pride in ourselves.’’

“We have to be able to find a way when things are not maybe exactly what we want to just try to grind,’’ forward Mika Zibanejad said. “I thought Quickie give us a chance to win. We didn’t really have that many good looks maybe as we wanted. We got to [find a way on] these types of nights when we don’t have it. I feel like it’s been a lot this season.”

Quick has been brilliant in his backup role all season. He is 3-5-1 but entered the game with a .932 save percentage and a 1.88 goals-against average. The Rangers have scored only 16 goals in his nine starts, including six in his last five starts.

Down 1-0 late in the third period, the Rangers went on the power play when Forsberg shot the puck over the glass. But a day after they rallied to tie the Flyers late in the third on Zibanejad’s power-play goal, they didn’t even get a shot on goal with the man advantage this time. Overall, the power play was 0-for-3.

“The power play tonight was a microcosm of our overall five-on-five game,’’ Sullivan said. “We couldn’t make tape-to-tape passes five-on-five, and that just carried over into the power play.’’

By Colin Stephenson

colin.stephenson@newsday.comColinSNewsday

Colin Stephenson covers the Rangers for Newsday. He has spent more than two decades covering the NHL and just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.