Well, they weren’t going to win ’em all.
Yet this sure was an ugly way to watch the Rangers’ season-opening three-game winning streak come to an end, with a sloppy 4-1 loss to the Jets on Tuesday night at the Garden punctuated by a stinking performance from the power play.
“There’s no doubt that the difference in tonight’s game was the specialty teams,” said coach Alain Vigneault, whose man-advantage went 0-for-5 over 8:37, which included giving up a shorthanded goal. “Their power play found a way to score two, and our power play found a way to give up one and not score one.”
So there is the synopsis, a little tidier than the actual performance. Because the Jets (3-1-0) did their best to impart their physical brand of hockey, shoving and slashing and getting called for a tiny percentage of their infractions. But the Rangers (3-1-0) did their share of retaliation, and it just turned out Winnipeg was able to make them pay.
“We got a lot of power plays out of it, we just didn’t find a way to execute on them and hurt them, and they were able to on their power play,” said defenseman Marc Staal, who took a violent slash on the hand from Adam Pardy early in the second that went uncalled, which followed a big-time shoulder to his chest from Chris Thorburn late in the first. “It was a chippy type of game, and that’s what it came down to.”
Staal made a great sprawling play midway through the first period, getting a stick on a Alexander Burmistrov shot before Henrik Lundqvist was able to perform another bit of acrobatics that fell right in line with the franchise netminder’s incredibly hot start to the year. Yet moments before, Lundqvist could do nothing to stop 19-year-old rookie Nikolaj Ehlers from ripping a slap shot from a wide-open spot in the left circle, scoring the first goal of his young NHL career and negating Mats Zuccarello’s third of the season, which opened the scoring at 6:45.
“I think all three goals were a result of me not being able to find it,” said Lundqvist, who finished with 25 saves. “That’s obviously something I have to do better at the next game — try to track the puck through screens.”
But should Lundqvist really have to worry about that when his team has an extra skater, as it did late in the second period and the scored tied 1-1? Well, after a foolish icing, the Rangers lost the defensive-zone draw, and Bryan Little ended up with the puck in the high slot, where he was given all the room to let one fly over Lundqvist’s glove, giving the Jets the lead.
“Lesson learned here — you can’t just show up and think it’s going to happen easily,” captain Ryan McDonagh said. “This is a tough league. Every team is tough and our compete level wasn’t there.”
One of the 41 shots the Rangers did get on Winnipeg backup goalie Michael Hutchinson came as Derick Brassard got himself a good look at the right post midway through the third that was just smothered. Starting his backcheck, Brassard slashed away at the hands of Little, was called for it, and Little got his second of the night on the ensuing power play for a 3-1 Jets lead.
“I think sometimes when you create a lot of shots, you feel like you are controlling the game a little bit,” Lundqvist said. “But at the same time, you need to get in there and create the big chances and they made it tough for us to do that.”
So the Rangers lost a game, and even after this 0-fer on the man-advantage, they’re only 1-for-9 on the season. Alternate captain Derek Stepan was adamant about there being “no reason to panic yet,” but he didn’t try to make an excuse for this performance.
“Every night you step on the ice you have to make sure that you’re mentally prepared as a group and as an individual,” Stepan said. “I think it’s one of our strengths as a team, is our mental focus is pretty good. For whatever reason tonight, we came out and we were just kind of blah.”