Rangers fall to Golden Knights to complete winless road trip

The Rangers won’t go so far as to explicitly say it — and probably never will — but it sure seems like we have reached the moral victories phase of this rebuilding season.

Sure, they took a step forward. But if it was a step forward to record their fourth loss in a row, a 4-2 defeat to the Golden Knights in Las Vegas on Tuesday night, then that’s just a reminder of how deep they had gotten over this gruesome western road trip.

“We didn’t quit, but hey, we want to win hockey games,” coach David Quinn told reporters. “There’s no silver lining.”

The Rangers (17-18-7) have had a tough time since Thanksgiving, going 5-10-5 during that stretch with this past week being when the bottom fell out. While losing these four games by a combined score of 22-5, they had lost discipline and structure, and most alarming, they had lost their competitive edge. That returned in part for this one, but not surprisingly, it wasn’t enough to surpass a good Golden Knights (27-15-4) team playing in front of their raucous crowd.

“We did a lot of better things tonight, but it’s just tough sledding right now,” Chris Kreider said on MSG. “You knew it was going to happen before it got better. But we did a lot of things well tonight as opposed to the last few games. That’s the only way you can turn things around, with hard work and committing to the details that win hockey games.

“It was better tonight, but not good enough against a good team on the road.”

All of the good efforts through the opening 40 minutes only got the Rangers a 3-0 deficit going into the third period. But that’s when they woke up a bit, starting with Adam McQuaid getting into a big-time heavyweight bout with Ryan Reaves.

Mika Zibanejad then scored at 11:43 to cut the deficit to 3-1, but with goalie Alexandar Georgiev on the bench for the extra attacker, Ryan Carpenter got an empty-netter at 18:40 to seal it before a late goal from Jesper Fast changed only the final score, not the outcome.
“Someone referenced the ketchup bottle between periods,” Kreider said. “You hit the ketchup bottle over and over, it comes out all at once. It was Henrik, I think. So that’s a good analogy.”

A good microcosm of what’s happening is the aforementioned Henrik Lundqvist, who backed up Georgeiv for the second time on this trip. Actually, Georgiev has played in all of the four games in 2019, with Lundqvist getting pulled from his previous two starts at home against the Penguins on Jan. 2 and in Arizona this past Sunday.

see also

Trade deadline is pink elephant that looms over Rangers

Right now, there is enough on David Quinn’s plate that…

And Georgiev gave his team a chance in making 27 saves, but they just never tested his counterpart, Marc-Andre Fleury, nearly enough.
“One of the things we have to do more of is shoot pucks,” Quinn said, his team getting outshot in the first period, 13-5, when they held most of the play but went down 1-0 on a goal from Cody Eakin at 16:02.

Defenseman Tony DeAngelo, playing in his first game back after being a scratch for the previous three straight and six of the past eight, took exception to a hit from Max Pacioretty early in the game that forced him to miss the rest of the first period. When he returned, he went after the former Montreal captain and got called for the retaliatory boarding as well as a 10-minute misconduct for trying to start a fight with any willing combatant (of which there was none).

Vegas, of course, got a power-play goal from former Ranger Brandon Pirri, and then was able to make it 3-0 on a breakaway goal from Jonathan Marchessault just before the end of the second.

Now the Rangers return to New York for a home-and-home with the Islanders, beginning Thursday at the Garden. No moral victories waiting in that one.

“Any time you play a rival, it gives it more juice,” Quinn said. “But we’ve certainly got to get out of this rut we’re in.”