Disengaged, lethargic hockey was supposed to be a thing of the past upon the enforced passing of the coaching baton from Alain Vigneault to David Quinn.
Yet, here were the Rangers on Garden ice Sunday with a performance from 2017-18, which it to say, from that dreadful place that prompted the Letter, the Purge and a firing.
It was all that bad, even if the Blueshirts showed a semblance of pride and of a pulse over the third period before losing 4-3 in overtime to the Golden Knights and coming away with a point only because of Henrik Lundqvist’s brilliance through 40 minutes in which the home team might as well have been cardboard cutouts.
“It’s his point,” Mats Zuccarello said of the netminder. “We were not there.”
Lundqvist, who made flurries of outrageous stops against wide-open, point-blank chances while his teammates were both unaware and out of the picture following repeated turnovers and inexplicably bad decisions and a reluctance to get involved in the battle, was distressed both on the ice and in the postgame room.
“It’s one thing to lose when you’re ready, prepared and play hard, but I think the first two periods, it’s not the way we’ve been playing,” said Lundqvist, ultimately beaten by Alex Tuch on a two-on-one at 2:11 of OT. “At home, in front of our fans, we need to work harder. Mistakes are going to happen. I make mistakes, we all make mistakes, but we can’t accept not being ready to fight for one another here.
“I thought we were not ready. The position we’re in, we have to battle every night. It’s not going to be great every night but at least you’ve got to battle. That’s upsetting when you see that.”
The Rangers were not only mistake-prone, but passive. Quinn’s mantra of “Fast, physical and relentless” hockey seems more and more of a wish list that might be beyond even Santa’s reach to deliver to Broadway.
The coach was perturbed, all but scoffing at his team’s effort following the sixth defeat in its past seven games (1-3-3) and eighth (2-5-3) over the past 10 matches as the competition gets tougher by the week.
“It’s ridiculous how good [Lundqvist] was the first two periods because it was two bad a periods as we’ve played all year,” Quinn said. “I mean, they outhit us, outskated us, out-passed us, outshot us; they out-everythinged us except for goaltending.”
And then Quinn seconded the emotion when informed that Lundqvist had been ticked off following the match. The coach likely did not need to be told, as he was able to see and hear his animated goaltender at the bench during television timeouts.
“How could you not be [ticked off]? It’s embarrassing. You can’t come out and play hockey like that,” he said. “It’s 200-by-85. If you don’t want to be involved in contact, you should do something else. You can’t hide in this game. And we hid for two periods.”
Both teams were coming off overtime losses on Friday after blowing three-goal leads, the Blueshirts at home to Arizona and the Golden Knights to the Devils in New Jersey. Vegas was able to brush aside the disappointment while dominating the Rangers, owning a 27-9 advantage on five-on-five attempts even if the score was 1-1.
The score never quite was reflective of the game, the Blueshirts leading early 1-0 before falling behind 2-1, tying it and then falling behind again by the end of the second. Chris Kreider, whose left-circle snapper beat Marc-Andre Fleury to knot the match at 3:29 of the third after spending the first two periods as as much an onlooker as any of his mates, addressed the team’s absence of physicality.
“We took a few too many penalties in Tampa being aggressive, and maybe we got confused about being physical and moving our feet,” Kreider said. “You have to close on guys, you have to finish guys.
“There’s a right way to play and we’ve only being doing it in spurts.”
There were spurts last year, too.
‘Nuf said.