Rangers drop another close one to a playoff contender

DALLAS — David Quinn had been encouraged by the way the Rangers had competed against playoff contenders of late.

But they still don’t have any wins to show for it.

The Rangers kept it close again Tuesday night but came up empty on four power plays and lost their fifth straight, falling to the Stars 1-0 at American Airlines Center.

All five losses have come against teams in playoff position, three of the games needing extra time to be decided. Quinn lauded his club before the game for not getting deflated by the results, but Tuesday’s defeat offered a different level of frustration.

“Tonight was disappointing compared to the other one-goal losses,” Quinn said. “I thought we had a lot more in our game that we didn’t show tonight. Too many guys had bad nights.”

The Rangers’ (27-28-11) comeback efforts were made more challenging midway through the third period while they were on their fourth power play. With 40 seconds left on the man-advantage, Mika Zibanejad was belatedly called for a five-minute major boarding penalty and game misconduct after delivering a hit on Radek Faksa in the corner.

“[The linesman] felt that [Zibanejad] hit [Faksa] in the head,” Quinn said. “That was the explanation I got.”

Just 17 seconds later, Brady Skjei was whistled for a slashing penalty, giving the Stars a five-on-three before an extended man-advantage the Rangers were forced to kill off. By the time all parties were out of the box, the Rangers had less than five minutes to find the equalizer, which never came, and they spent two more minutes back on the penalty kill after a Kevin Shattenkirk hooking penalty.

Making his second straight start, Alexandar Georgiev stopped 31-of-32 shots on net, only missing a John Klingberg wrister early in the second period. Georgiev was outdone by Stars goalie Ben Bishop, who made 28 saves for the shutout.

“Georgie kept us in the game tonight with some huge saves, especially on that penalty kill in the third period,” Skjei said. “We gotta finish some games to get some wins.”

While the power play struggled to get anything going, Quinn was unhappy with his team’s mental game as well.

“I didn’t love a bunch of guys’ performances tonight,” he said. “A little bit sloppy and not real responsible. … I just thought mentally we were just not very purposeful in what we were trying to accomplish.”

Lias Andersson, Connor Brickley and Freddy Claesson were the healthy scratches. … Chris Kreider dropped down to the third line, skating with Brett Howden and Filip Chytil, while Pavel Buchnevich joined the top line with Mika Zibanejad and Jimmy Vesey.