Not even a goal explosion could get Rangers a win

RALEIGH, N.C. — After playing their first 120 minutes of the season without ever taking a lead, the Rangers wasted no time in getting their first one Sunday night.

They just never seemed to want to hold onto it.

They held four different leads through the first 45 minutes of action but none stuck.

Instead, the Hurricanes showed them how it was done, finally taking their first lead with less than 10 minutes left in the game and making it stand as the Rangers remained winless with an 8-5 loss at PNC Arena.

“Obviously a real tough night,” coach David Quinn said. “Certainly didn’t have our attention to detail that I thought we had in the first two games. Obviously defensively we really looked like we had never gone over the D-zone coverage or any of the things we’ve been working on.

“We had a hard time handling success tonight.”

Playing the second half of a back-to-back, the Rangers fell to 0-3-0, their worst start since beginning the 1998-99 season 0-4-0.

The Hurricanes took their first and only lead at 10:44 of the third period after a chaotic sequence in front of the net. Justin Faulk finally got the puck wide and sent in another shot, which Andrei Svechnikov got a piece of and tipped in to go up 6-5.

Less than a minute later, Warren Foegele added his second goal of the night, slamming the door shut on any hope the Rangers had of answering back. Teuvo Teravainen’s empty-netter with 30 seconds left accounted for the final score.

“We gotta be able to put a 60-minute effort [together] to win,” Mika Zibanejad said. “We can’t just show flashes and spurts of it.”

Chris Kreider had put the Rangers up for the fourth time in the game earlier in the period, when he scored his second goal of the night at 4:26. But the goal had barely been announced before the Hurricanes came back again, as they had all night. It took just 35 seconds for the lead to evaporate as Lucas Wallmark finished off a one-timer to tie it 5-5, the first of three straight unanswered goals.

“Once they made it 5-5, I thought we got a little bit defeated,” Quinn said. “We just gotta learn to be a little mentally tougher and fight through some adversity.”

The Rangers had no problem scoring Sunday, something they had struggled to do with just three goals through their first two games.

Jimmy Vesey opened up the scoring just 49 seconds into the game with his first of two goals and Kreider soon made it a 2-0 lead for the Rangers, showing a quick step less than 24 hours after a loss in Buffalo.

By the end of the period, though, that fast start was wiped away.

Foegele beat Alexandar Georgiev — making his season debut between the pipes — at 9:07, and just over five minutes later, Jordan Martinook found a one-timer to tie the game 2-2 by the end of the first period.

“It was just a matter of time before the floodgates opened for us offensively, but that can’t be at the expense of our D-zone play and our neutral zone play,” Kreider said.

Vesey and Pavel Buchnevich (on the power play) scored go-ahead goals in the second period, but neither was enough to win it as the Rangers’ defensive structure failed them time and time again.

“It was a tough game for sure,” Georgiev said. “I didn’t like getting scored on seven times.”