Rangers fall to red-hot Red Wings for third straight loss

DETROIT — Sometimes when you lose a game, you can’t do much but credit the other team’s goaltender for stealing two points from you.

And then there are nights like Thursday night when you kick yourself for giving the two points away.

“Not good enough,’’ Rangers coach Gerard Gallant said after his team lost its third straight game — and second straight in regulation — falling to the red-hot Red Wings, 4-1, at Little Caesars Arena.

“We didn’t play hard enough for 60 minutes,’’ Gallant said. “And you know, what bothered me about it is some of those goals they scored on the rush, we had bad reads on the rush and left them wide open. And then two of the goals were unnecessary goals, for me.’’

“A little too sloppy,’’ Jacob Trouba said. “Not our best game, for sure. I think we’ve had a couple now that we lost, [and] we’ve got to get back on track.’’

After their second seven-game winning streak of the season, the Rangers lost to Calgary in overtime in the final game of the Western Canada swing last Saturday and fell to Winnipeg, 4-1, at Madison Square Garden on Monday despite outshooting the Jets 51-21. Then they matched that final score against Detroit.

On Thursday, former Ranger Andrew Copp had a goal and two assists and goaltender Ville Husso made 30 saves as Detroit (28-21-9) won for the seventh time in eight games.

The Rangers (33-16-9) fell six points behind the second-place Devils in the Metropolitan Division, after the Devils’ 4-3 overtime win over the Kings.

Before the game, the Rangers announced that forwards Vitali Kravtsov and Jake Leschyshyn were unavailable “due to roster management,’’ presumably meaning the two forwards are expected to be traded soon.

That created a little wrinkle for Gallant, who was forced to dress a lineup of 11 forwards and seven defensemen rather than the usual 12 and six.

No one thought the odd configuration was a problem, though.

“No, I don’t think so,’’ forward Jimmy Vesey said. “I think, if anything, it’s more ice [time] for us. You might play with different guys, but I think by this point we’ve played with pretty much everyone, so I don’t think it was a huge deal.’’

The Rangers did have the additional challenge of playing the final 15 minutes of the first period without forward Tyler Motte, who took a shot to the face and had to leave for the rest of the period. That left Gallant to rotate 10 forwards through three lines for the rest of the period.

“You know what, though? I think if you talk to [Artemi] Panarin and all those guys, they love playing three lines,’’ Gallant said. “They complain when we’ve got to play four lines.’’

The Red Wings scored first, on a goal by Copp at 15:33 of the first period, but the Rangers tied it at 6:06 of the second period. Vincent Trocheck stripped Detroit’s Robert Hagg of the puck in the neutral zone and broke in on a two-on-one with Alexis Lafreniere. Trocheck shot it between Husso’s pads for his 17th goal.

But a little more than two minutes later, Motte, who had returned to the game to start the second period, got stripped of the puck by Dylan Larkin at his own blue line. That led to a shot from the wing by Filip Zadina that beat goaltender Jaroslav Halak (19 saves) to restore the Red Wings’ lead at 8:18.

Late in the period, Halak slid right to left to make a brilliant save on a shot by David Perron, but the goalie’s momentum carried him way out of the goal. The rebound went to Perron behind the goal line and he passed in front to Michael Rasmussen for a tap-in into the vacated net to make it 3-1.

Filip Hronek’s power-play goal at 4:51 of the third period made it 4-1.

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.