There isn’t a lot the Rangers can say nowadays to make things better.
The message is one of putting their heads down and working hard. At least they are starting to resemble a team that is worthy of a 21-14-4 record and third place in the Metropolitan Division, behind the Capitals and Islanders.
But what the Blueshirts need now as they regroup after an appropriately confusing and inconsistent 1-2 road trip against the Predators, Lightning and Panthers is for their leaders to no longer talk the talk, but to walk the walk. It won’t be easy. After their day off on Sunday, they host the two conference leaders, the Stars and the Capitals, on Tuesday and Saturday.
Maybe alternate captain Derek Stepan hasn’t exactly been the biggest problem in the six games since he returned from two broken ribs, but coach Alain Vigneault was correct when he addressed Stepan’s play after a disheartening 3-0 loss to the Panthers in Sunrise, Fla., on Saturday night.
“He needs to be better,” Vigneault said of Stepan, who was out for 10 games after the Bruins’ Matt Beleskey boarded him in Boston on Nov. 27.
“Like a lot of our players right now, there’s no doubt that the effort is there, the preparation is there, but at the end of the day, it’s about results right now,” the coach said. “It’s about better execution, and as a group, we saw it [Saturday] night, the execution was a little bit off and we couldn’t capitalize.”
Stepan hardly has been an obvious detriment, the way Emerson Etem was on Saturday night or the way Kevin Hayes was before he played his way into a healthy scratch. Stepan is rarely the one that turns the puck over or blows a defensive coverage.
But the 25-year-old is supposed to be a bedrock of the team, a cerebral leader who not only plays at both ends of the ice, but produces. He has no goals and one assists in six games, and he knows there needs to be more from him if the Rangers are going to bust out of the slump that took them to 5-11-2 in their past 18 games.
“It’s getting there,” Stepan said Saturday night. “I think each game has gotten better. Certainly been a battle thus far. I just need to find a way to maybe get a goofy one or something like that and open the floodgates. I think I’ve been better each game and I think [Saturday] night was my best.”
The Blueshirts did play a solid game Saturday, peppering Florida goalie Roberto Luongo with 40 shots — each of which he gobbled up. They only allowed 20 to get to Henrik Lundqvist, and they held the play for almost all of the game.
But they still lost, and they are trying to find a reason why.
“I think offensively we have to be better,” Stepan said. “I think every team once in a while will find a stretch where they’re maybe not going to the net hard enough or maybe not getting to the inside. Offensively, we had our looks and the goalie was able to see everything. That’ll be a focus going forward, to make sure we do a better job taking the goalie’s eyes, making it difficult on him.”
Another leader who is relied upon heavily is Dan Girardi, and he too is coming back from injury. He has three games under his belt since returning from swelling in his right knee due to a crack in his kneecap. With a top-heavy forward group such as the Panthers had, Vigneault moved Girardi down to pair with Keith Yandle, while Kevin Klein — also returning from an oblique injury, but much more steady this season than Girardi — went up to pair with captain Ryan McDonagh in the hope of shutting down Florida’s top unit, which they did.
Girardi is hoping the two games in six days are going to allow his knee to heal some more, and get his game back to where it needs to be as one of the team’s leaders.
“I really don’t like taking a couple of days off like that,” Girardi said of being off the ice for the travel and maintenance days on Thursday and Friday. “I want to keep going, but sometimes you have to suck it up and take a day off. But I felt a lot better out there, obviously with two days off. Hopefully we can keep on it and hopefully this thing goes away soon.”
That’s the way the Rangers feel as a whole, hoping this malaise goes away soon. And they need their leaders to drag them out of it.
“We just need,” Vigneault said, “to put our whole game together.”