Brady Skjei’s frustration blunder helps cost Rangers in ugly loss

MONTREAL — Not for a moment is this a road thing. Rather this is a Rangers’ thing, the team having lost four of its past five in regulation following another substandard performance in Saturday’s 5-2 defeat to the Canadiens.

“We weren’t playing that great at home before we started with these road games,” said Chris Kreider, whose team was down 4-0 by the 5:29 mark of the second period. “We were pressing, got a little bit anxious, stretched it out, and gave up two-on-one’s left and right.”

This was a failure of execution rather than effort. Fact is, the team did try, even if only able to produce puny results. But this was largely a mindless performance, typified to the extreme by Brady Skjei’s blunder with under 10 seconds to play in the first period when the defenseman stopped playing to contest a delayed tripping penalty call awaiting him and thus permitted a fallen Tomas Tatar to feed a wide-open Shea Weber in the slot for the goal that made it 2-0 at 19:53.

The whole thing was nonsensical, with Skjei turning away to argue with the nearby linesman, Greg Devorski, who obviously had nothing to do with the call that was made by a referee 60 feet away from the play. Then again, none of Skjei’s teammates were able to ride to the rescue. The three forwards on the ice — Mika Zibanejad, Jesper Fast and Jimmy Vesey — had all been trapped below the offensive zone hash marks while the Habs swept in on one of many odd-man rushes with Brendan Smith also up ice.

“He stopped, but Brady’s not the only guy to do it in the league, unfortunately,” David Quinn said. “Guys throw their arms up to [complain]. Other guys stopped, too [on that play]. It wasn’t just Brady.”

The late goal seemed to traumatize the Rangers, who yielded a two-on-one goal to Artturi Lehkonen at 2:04 of the second then the 4-0 goal at 5:29 when Lehkonen pounced on a horrific Neal Pionk backhand giveaway into the slot and beat a helpless Alex Georgiev.

“We’re not in the greatest mindset right now,” Quinn said of the team’s developing fragile nature. “We’re not playing with a lot of confidence, and for good reason.”

It is not unprecedented for a Rangers’ goaltender to display fits of anger in the Habs’ building. Generally, Henrik Lundqvist has been the irate, stick-smashing netminder. This time, it was Georgiev whacking his stick against the goal post three times after the 3-0 goal. He faced 41 shots.

“They were coming hard at us with some good two-on-one chances,” Georgiev said. “I thought I could have saved one of them. I showed emotion.”

The Rangers did respond by scoring twice within a span of 6:02 to cut the lead to 4-2, Jimmy Vesey converting on a four-on-four situation while Ryan Strome finished a neat four-man passing power play sequence at the left porch at 14:12. At least the Blueshirts did not quit, but then, if that’s the bar by which they are to be judged, what’s the point?

“It turned into a track meet for a bit in the second, and then when we were down 4-0, we started to play the right way,” Kevin Shattenkirk said. “We’re turning away from pucks and battles. We need to come to a stop. We need to stop in the middle and get back to protecting the front and the house the way were doing earlier in the year.”

If the Rangers were somewhat proud of themselves for making it a game in the second, they should hold the confetti. Fact is, down two, the Blueshirts did not get a shot on Carey Price for the first 11:07 of the third period, that one a 60-footer from Shattenkirk. They finished with three shots for the period, two from Shattenkirk, one from his D-partner Fredrik Claesson, and, thus, none from any of the club’s 12 forwards. Oof.

Kevin Hayes had his second consecutive sub-standard game. Kreider created little impact. The Rangers, who were disconnected and in disarray much of the way trying to cope with the Habs’ speed game, couldn’t score at five-on-five while allowing five goals to a team that had scored a sum of seven goals while going 0-4-1 in their previous five matches.

“It’s not a crisis,” Shattenkirk said. “But we have things to address, for sure.”