If this had been any other opponent, maybe it wouldn’t feel as if the Rangers were bleeding.
But when a scab the size of a lost Stanley Cup final is the one to come off, well, it hurts.
“You remember that,” Dan Girardi said after his team lost to the Kings 4-2 on Tuesday night at the Garden, “and you’ll remember that for a while.”
What’s remembered so clearly is the five-game loss to the Kings in that tooth-and-nail series with a championship on the line. It’s in the past, sure, and the Rangers (46-19-7) have little reason for this one game, this one substandard effort, to hold any substantial concern.
They’re now 7-2-1 in their past 10, and an outrageous 35-9-3 since Dec. 8, keeping a six-point lead over the Islanders in the Metropolitan Division and still in the midst in the race for the Presidents’ Trophy. Oh yeah, and starting goalie Henrik Lundqvist is eyeing this weekend as his return from a seven-week absence due to the blood-vessel injury in his neck.
But with the Kings (36-23-14) barely holding onto to their playoff lives, now tied in points with the Flames for the third spot in the Pacific, the Blueshirts had to be one of the last teams in the league that would want to supply some oxygen.
“I think we had a good chance to take a little life out of their playoff hopes, but they came out with a great effort,” said Girardi, who himself played a whale of a game. “They were very desperate, as you could clearly tell. They were fighting for their lives out there. But it would have been nice to have a better effort, but you can’t really dwell on it too much.”
Mats Zuccarello put the Rangers up 1-0 just 51 seconds into the game. From there, it all went downhill.
Midway through the first, a harmless floater from Robin Regehr bounced off Rangers defenseman Keith Yandle and past Cam Talbot, tying it 1-1. Just over four minutes into the second, a Talbot turnover behind his net — one he thought Girardi called for on a reverse of the puck and was intercepted by Justin Williams — ended with former Ranger Marian Gaborik (of course) giving the Kings a 2-1 lead.
Two third-period tallies within the opening 5:28 from Jeff Carter and Jake Muzzin sealed a 4-1 lead, making Kevin Hayes’ garbage-time goal a mere formality.
“We had trouble everywhere, to be honest with you,” Derek Stepan said. “It’s really difficult to win hockey games in this league, especially down the stretch when teams are fighting to get into the playoffs. You have to be ready to compete at a high level. Tonight, we just had a lot of things go wrong for us.”
The Rangers are now off to Ottawa for Thursday night’s game against the hottest team in the league, the Senators and their folk-hero goalie, Andrew Hammond. From there, the weekend likely holds Lundqvist’s return at some point in the back-to-back, Saturday against the Bruins in Boston or Sunday at home against the Capitals.
It’s been some time since the Rangers have had to rebound from an effort like this, and Stepan stated the obvious, saying, “That’s a good thing. You’re going to have them, too, and the biggest thing as a group is we have to stop it — now.”