‘Sloppy and stupid’ Rangers play second period to forget

There are going to be many more games when it seems like things just aren’t bouncing the right way for the Rangers. But they’re going to have to learn how to deal with it better than this, or it’s going to be an even more dreadful season than most expect.

The Blueshirts suffered a 4-1 loss to the Flames on Sunday night at the Garden even after they peppered inexperienced goalie David Rittich with 45 shots. But their frustration in not converting manifested itself in lulls of play, including a stretch of 2:34 in the second period when a 1-0 deficit went to 3-0 by way of the Blueshirts’ ugly penchant for turnovers and a scattered defensive structure, undercutting all of the previous and future good effort.

“That second period, they started getting some momentum on some turnovers, and their forecheck is going — it’s going to happen in a game,” alternate captain Marc Staal said. “Instead of sticking to structure in our end, having guys support each other, we got sloppy and really disconnected. We have to figure out how to deal with it better when a team starts getting momentum, and be able to handle that and not get hurt. We got sloppy and stupid for a large stretch of the second.”

This is all a learning experience for David Quinn’s Rangers (2-5-1), who can only continue to talk about the good things they’re doing for so long before the losses start eating away at them. It’s easy to point to the opposition, with the Flames (5-3-0) getting the career-best effort from the 26-year-old Rittich in his 25th NHL start, aided by star Johnny Gaudreau putting up two highlight-reel goals.

But guess what? Other teams have good goaltending and talented players, as well.

“We created a lot of chances and we can sit here and say that we didn’t play a bad game, but we lost,” forward Mats Zuccarello said. “It’s not good enough.”

The Rangers went down early when Gaudreau made a great play to bury a spinning backhand at 17:00 of the first period. But then Garnet Hathaway scored his first of two goals when the Rangers were pinned in their own end and he was left alone at the far post to tap in a Mark Jankowski pass at 12:21 of the second. Gaudreau then poured gas on the fire when he was given enough room to dance around in the slot before beating Henrik Lundqvist with a slick wrist shot at 14:55, taking a commanding 3-0 lead into the third period.

“It’s too bad,” said Lundqvist, who made 22 saves. “I feel like these types of games are starting to add up, unfortunately. We are playing good enough to win games, but we are not finding ways to win games. It’s obviously something that we need to change fast.”

The Rangers did come out in the third period with renewed attention to detail and denied Rittich his first career shutout when Mika Zibanejad scored a power-play goal at 6:41, the team’s fourth goal on the man-advantage in the past three games. They continued to get chances, but they just couldn’t score.

“I still don’t think we’re a quick-release, take-advantage-of-broken-plays type team,” Quinn said.

With just under two minutes remaining in regulation, Rasmus Andersson laid a big, open-ice hit on Zuccarello and defenseman Brady Skjei — who played by far his worst game of the season — decided to jump Andersson in hopes of starting a fight. As Andersson turtled on the ice, Hathaway went the other way on a breakaway and beat Lundqvist’s glove to make it 4-1.

Afterward, Quinn looked utterly exasperated. (And bless his heart if he is going to continue taking losses this hard.) Following Tuesday night’s Garden match against the Panthers, the Rangers go on a four-game road trip, starting in Chicago on Thursday before heading out to California. That could be pretty ugly if bad things start to snowball.

“They’re all tough, believe me,” Zuccarello said. “No one wants to lose hockey games.”