Henrik Lundqvist pulled again in another lopsided Rangers loss
GLENDALE, Ariz. — It started and ended where it always does these days for the Rangers — with a bad penalty compounded by atrocious penalty-killing.
Once Brendan Smith (scratched the previous three games) took a mindless elbowing penalty at 6:37 of the first, the Blueshirts were done. Conor Garland scored on a deflection in front at 7:19, and the rout was on.
The 5-0 blowout by the 26th-overall Coyotes on Sunday afternoon came as Henrik Lundqvist surrendered all five goals on 32 shots before being pulled at 16:38 of the second period.
“Right now we’re a team that does not have a lot of confidence, I can tell you that much,” Mats Zuccarello told The Post. “We’re not a team that’s going to win games because we get a couple of bounces going our way.
“We need to do everything the right way all the time to be able to win. It’s a very good league. When we don’t play at our best, we don’t have much of a chance. That’s not to be critical of anyone here. That’s the way it is. We were doing that before.”
Before seems like forever ago, doesn’t it? The Blueshirts can do nothing right, having lost three straight by an aggregate 18-3 score to finish the first half at 17-17-7 but with only five victories (5-9-5) since Thanksgiving.
“The last three games, none of us, from the goalie to the defense to the forwards, played well enough,” Zuccarello. “I wish I could explain it. Whatever we try to do right, turns out wrong.”
This is a flashback to last season, when the goaltender buckled after carrying the team through January. Indeed, Lundqvist’s being pulled in back-to-back games comes just under a year after it first happened to him, the goaltender being pulled in consecutive losses in Anaheim and Toronto, though those two were separated by the bye week.
Lundqvist did not speak after this one — perhaps the second or third time in his career he has opted out of a postgame briefing — in which he got no help while the Coyotes pranced around the ice to their hearts’ content without fear of opposition.
It was 2-0 at 9:19, the Coyotes racing to a 16-3 edge in shots through the first 13:36. The margin built with the three-goal second period that represented the third straight game in which the team allowed at least three goals in a period and the eighth time in the last 19 games. The Rangers have allowed four goals or more (not including shootouts) in 10 of their last 16 matches.
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The Rangers did kill Arizona’s final two power plays, but if you want to give the rancher credit for closing the barn door after all the horses escaped, so be it. When Garland scored, that was the 16th power-play goal allowed by the penalty-killing crew over the last 15 games (16-for-57 by the end of the match, (71.9 percent). The power play, 0-for-1 in this one, is 8-for-38 over the same stretch.
“We had no legs,” said an apparently shell-shocked and soft-spoken David Quinn. “They had way more jump than we did.”
The Rangers barely tested Darcy Kuemper, sending 23 shots his way. The goaltender made his toughest save by going right-to-left to rob Cody McLeod at the right post 5:30 into the third. Otherwise, nada.
“We didn’t have any energy,” said Quinn. “No mental pace or physical pace.”
Kevin Hayes missed his second straight, his status unknown for Tuesday’s match in Las Vegas. “It’s one of those things where he could wake up [Monday] and feel great,” said Quinn. “That’s just how it is.”