Rangers showed signs of playing David Quinn hockey

The last time the Rangers had a head coach making his NHL debut, they won for Bryan Trottier in Carolina to kick off the 2002-03 season. That was not a harbinger of things to come, the coach gone after a 21-26-6-1, 54-game misadventure.

Which is to suggest that not all that much should be read into the Blueshirts’ 3-2 defeat by the Predators in David Quinn’s introduction to NHL head coaching at the Garden on Thursday. Not all that much about the result, that is.

For in the final analysis, the Blueshirts in fact did a pretty good job of bringing the game and mentality they’d worked on the last three weeks at the Westchester practice facility to the big room on Broadway. Weren’t perfect, but were committed to the coach’s core principles.

“I think we brought a lot of what we practiced into the game, but it wasn’t for the full 60 minutes, so that’s something we certainly have to be aware of,” Mika Zibanejad said. “That’s something we have to correct and we can.

“Last year when we went through lulls, or key plays went against us, there were a lot of times when games just got away from us. We didn’t respond well. I think we did react well against adversity in this game, so I think that’s something we can build off even though it’s very disappointing to lose this one after looking forward to it all summer.”

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The Rangers went toe-to-toe against the reigning Presidents’ Trophy winners even if they couldn’t quite match talent for talent. The grit and the want, though, were evident, even through the portions of the match in which the Blueshirts couldn’t navigate through a clogged neutral zone. Patience was an attribute, too, the Rangers reeling it back in when nothing was there rather than trying to force plays willy-nilly. The defense did focus on taking the front.

“I thought we improved throughout the game, but I like how hard we worked,” said Henrik Lundqvist, outstanding throughout. “I think it’s going to come; we’re going to improve each game. We had our moments.”

Jimmy Vesey, concussed by Filip Forsberg on a reverse check to the face in Nashville on Feb. 3, played perhaps the finest, most assertive game of his career after giving the Predators’ center a two-handed chop to the back of the legs and a stick to the midsection on his first shift. The Vesey-Kevin Hayes-Mats Zuccarello unit was the club’s most dangerous throughout most of the night, pumping a combined nine shots at Pekka Rinne.

The Blueshirts played north-south hockey in which they drove for the net and put pucks at Rinne’s feet in an attempt to create rebound opportunities. For the most part, they shot when the opportunity presented itself. But not, that is, 1:20 into the third period of what was a 1-1 game when the notoriously selfless and pass-first Zuccarello eschewed a shot from the slot off a nifty right-wing, backhand feed from Vesey in order to try a high-degree-of-difficulty dish to Hayes at the left porch. The pass went awry.

The Rangers had only one power play on which they generated little. They should have had a second, but the Ghislain Hebert-Chris Rooney referee duo somehow missed a Kevin Fiala high stick across Adam McQuaid’s face at 3:24 of the third period. The score was 1-1 at the time.

Four seconds later, it was 2-1 Nashville when P.K. Subban beat Lundqvist with a howitzer after a clean faceoff win against Zibanejad.

“We could have been on the power play and instead we’re behind 2-1,” said Zibanejad, 12-11 overall at the dots. “But I thought we responded well.”

Quinn for the most part rolled his lines and was careful about matchups when it came to kid centers Filip Chytil and Brett Howden. Chytil, whose strong work on the puck and clever centering feed set up Jesper Fast for the Blueshirts’ first goal, played 12:41. Howden got 10:32 in his NHL debut.

The coach was probably his team’s biggest critic when it was over. He said the Rangers hadn’t been aggressive enough on the puck and had backed off and in too often. He noted that it wasn’t like training camp. Well, duh. And even though he was right, this was only a first step. And first steps aren’t always dispositive.

Take 2002, for example.