Rangers had their chances, but couldn’t get it done vs. Flyers

This was a shrug of the shoulders, a lifting of the hands, a furrow of the brow.

Maybe the Rangers could be frustrated, but they certainly couldn’t be mad with what was generally a dominating performance — and yet still a loss, a 1-0 defeat at the hands of Flyers (current) backup goalie Anthony Stolarz and his 38-save shutout on Tuesday night at the Garden.
It opened the final part of the Rangers schedule after the 10-day break for the bye week and the All-Star Game on an odd note. The only goal came 100 seconds into the first period when Oskar Lindblom was able to lift one over Alex Georgiev’s shoulder, the last time the Flyers seemed to have the puck over the final 50 minutes.

But as the points start to turn direction in their importance — as in, the more the Rangers (21-21-7) get, the worse their draft pick will be — the club begins to meander its way through the final two-plus months with games that mean less than what is happening to the organization as a whole.

The focus is on the Feb. 25 trade deadline, and what happens leading up to it. So sure, it was the Flyers (21-23-6) on Broadway, with one of the league-record seven goalies they’ve used this season and with them having beaten the Jets in Philly on Monday night. But it didn’t exactly feel like a rivalry between these two postseason long shots.

The only highlights were courtesy of terrific saves from the 25-year-old Stolarz, the hockey pride of Edison, N.J., picking up his second career shutout in game No. 17.

“He did, he stole the game,” said Kevin Shattenkirk, who played arguably his best game of the season. “There were five or six chances there that we could have put in and we’re probably looking at a different outcome. But hats off to him. He played a great game, for sure. You hate to be beat by the other team’s goalie, but he came in here and stood tall.”

Rangers coach David Quinn decided to dress 11 forwards to drive home a lesson to Pavel Buchnevich by making him a healthy scratch, and the team was rather quickly playing with just 10 up-front, as rookie Brett Howden left with a knee sprain with 6:25 remaining in the first period.

The mixing and matching worked rather well, with Kevin Hayes only increasing his possible trade (or contract) value with another good game — his first since Jan. 2 while dealing with an upper-body injury — this time putting six shots on net in eight attempts for the normally pass-first center. Shattenkirk matched him with six on net, while Chris Kreider was right behind with five. The whole Flyers team combined for just seven shots on Georgiev over the final 40 minutes, and they were out-attempted overall, 66-30.

The best chance for the tie came when Hayes found Kreider alone in front on a second-period power play, only to be denied by Stolarz’s left pad. Rookie Filip Chytil also had a good chance with 12 minutes remaining in regulation, lifting a defender’s stick and shooting in the same motion. But the ring of the right pipe echoed up to the ceiling.

“At the end of the day, you have to capitalize on your chances,” Quinn said. “We just didn’t do that tonight.”

This was a positive sign coming off such a long break, with Shattenkirk saying, “If we had come back and laid an egg, that would have been something that we would have really been mad about.”

But there really isn’t too much to be mad about after this one. Surely the performance of Stolarz was frustrating, but what can really be done in that situation? Now, with a short trek out to Newark for Thursday’s match against the Devils, the Rangers will just have to focus on trying to put the same effort on the ice and hope for a result that won’t leave them dumbfounded.

“I thought we played well as a team,” Hayes said. “But obviously we didn’t score, and when you don’t score, you can’t win.”