Rangers still have stuff to fix
Head coach David Quinn of the New York Rangers behind the bench during the first period against the Nashville Predators at Madison Square Garden on Thursday, Oct. 4, 2018 in New York City. Credit: Jim McIsaac
On the flight home after his team’s 3-2 shootout victory over the struggling Anaheim Ducks on Thursday, Rangers coach David Quinn preferred to look at the glass as half-full.
His team had recovered from two bad losses in the front half of a four-game trip to Chicago and California and turned things around to put together its first winning streak of the season.
The Rangers return home having gone a respectable 2-2 on the trip. The fact that they allowed a last-minute goal in each of the last three games was a worry for another day.
“Listen, I mean, it’s a little demoralizing to be giving up goals with less than a minute to go three straight games,’’ Quinn said. “But we keep making progress, which is really what I want to focus on.’’
After a 4-1 loss to the Blackhawks in Chicago in the first game of the trip, the Rangers (5-7-1, 11 points) faced a Kings team that had lost six straight. But inside the final minute of a 3-3 game, they allowed Kings defenseman Alec Martinez to skate all the way up the ice — with no resistance whatsoever — and fire a shot between the legs of defenseman Brendan Smith and past a startled Henrik Lundqvist to give the Kings a 4-3 win.
In San Jose, the Rangers played perhaps their best game of the season and held a 3-2 lead before the Sharks’ Tomas Hertl scored the tying goal with less than two seconds left in regulation. Then, in Anaheim, against a Ducks team that also had lost six straight games, the Rangers were up 2-1 before Rickard Rakell scored with 25.3 seconds to go.
They did manage to win both games in shootouts, improving their record to 4-0-1 in overtime games and 3-0 in shootouts, so for the Rangers, all’s well that ends well, at least for now. But relying on a perfect shootout record to win games isn’t sustainable, and the Rangers, who have won only one game in the regulation 60 minutes, are going to have to figure out how to close out when they have a lead.
One thing Quinn likely will have them working on when they return to practice Saturday is defending in five-on-six situations, when the other team has pulled its goaltender for an extra skater. That’s something teams do practice, but not often.
“Probably not enough, apparently,’’ Quinn said.
“It’s not something you practice every day,’’ defenseman Marc Staal said. “It’s more your penalty-kill concepts — just [cutting off passes into] seams. If you give up that seam, it’s a recipe for goals. So you’ve just got to take the middle of the ice away. And we haven’t been able to do that for the last couple.’’
They’re going to need to fix that.
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.
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