NEW YORK — Time and time again this season, the Rangers have shown that when times get difficult, they have no response. They fold as easily as origami paper, just as they showed in the first period against the Tampa Bay Lightning.
“It seems like it just kind of snowballed,” a disappointed Will Cuylle said after the Rangers’ 5-1 loss.
That’s been the case in too many games this season. No one is blameless for that. This mess falls on Vincent Trocheck, Adam Fox, Artemi Panarin, Chris Kreider, Mika Zibanejad and every team leader. It falls on Chris Drury and the front office that put this team on the ice and contributed to plenty of the noise off of it. It falls on Peter Laviolette and his coaching staff, whose message is not landing.
The Rangers’ inability to limit the damage during the Lightning’s three-goal first period was nothing new. They’ve failed to do it all season. Monday was particularly egregious, given the team needs every point it can get if it wants a chance at the playoffs, but it was hardly unpredictable. This is what the 2024-25 Rangers do. At this point, it’s who they are.
“If we keep playing like that, we’ll probably miss the playoffs,” Panarin said.
New York played well early against the Lightning. The team had 11 of the game’s first 12 shots. The fourth line of Brennan Othmann, Jonny Brodzinski and Matt Rempe generated scoring chances and was on the ice for an offensive zone start when Fox drew a tripping penalty. The floundering Rangers power play even got a few dangerous looks early in their two minutes up a man. It was a good start.
Then Tampa Bay responded, as good teams do.
Brandon Hagel generated a short-handed chance with New York’s second power-play unit on the ice, and Chris Kreider hooked Anthony Cirelli. On the ensuing Lightning power play, Fox and Trocheck got caught low in the offensive zone trying to create a short-handed chance. That gave Nikita Kucherov and Brayden Point — two of the most dangerous offensive players in the world — space to work in transition. Kucherov passed to Point after entering the zone, then got the puck back after gaining a step on Cuylle. He redirected the backdoor feed past Igor Shesterkin.
The next shift, Trocheck missed a pass to Alexis Lafrenière in the defensive zone, leading to a look for Gage Goncalves and a goal by Yanni Gourde, who grabbed the loose puck from Carson Soucy’s legs and beat Shesterkin.
Nine seconds of game time after the goal, Sam Carrick went to the box for cross checking. Three Rangers shifts, three bad results.
“Just a couple mental lapses, I think,” Trocheck said.
Carrick’s penalty proved costly, as neither Trocheck or Braden Schneider could muscle Point away from poking a puck past Shesterkin’s pad. In 1:45, the Rangers went from a solid start to the game to down three against the often-impenetrable Andrei Vasilevskiy in net.
“There were eight or nine minutes where they scored a couple power-play goals, but we also turned the puck over way too much from the defensive zone,” Laviolette said.
“Before that we were outplaying them the whole period,” Cuylle added.
In fairness to the Rangers, they got back on track in the second period. They controlled play most of the period and even broke their power-play drought with a Zibanejad goal. But the hole was too big.
One disastrous stretch is enough to sink a game. Too many of them can sink a season.
The Rangers file off the ice after a 5-1 loss added another dent to their already faint playoff chances. (Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
This Rangers team has had more than its share of those stretches this year. They gave up two goals in a two-minute span twice Saturday against the Devils. They did the same earlier this season in Tampa Bay, so Monday was no fluke. In fact, the Rangers have given up multiple goals over a two-minute span 23 times this season, according to NHL Stats. That’s tied with the Sabres and Ducks for sixth-most in the league. The teams with more — Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and San Jose — are all eliminated from playoff contention.
New York might be destined for the same fate. With five games left, it is six points back of Montreal. The Red Wings now lead the Rangers in point percentage, too, and either Detroit or Montreal will get two points when the teams play each other Tuesday. The Rangers’ odds to make the playoffs have dipped to five percent, according to colleague Dom Luszczyszyn’s model.
“You never know what can happen in the standings,” Cuylle said. “Obviously it’s tough right now where we are, but we’re not mathematically eliminated by any means. If we can take one game at a time and go from there, you never know what can happen.”
But at this point it’s out of the Rangers’ control. If they win out, they’ll finish with 89 points. The Canadiens, winners of five in a row, only need to go 2-2-1 to get to 90.
The Rangers have plenty of on-ice shortcomings that have led to this point. Their power play has gone from one of the best in the league in 2023-24 to one of the worst this season. They have not scored a single game-tying goal at six-on-five this year, which has prevented them from picking up extra points in overtime. Their defensive structure is inconsistent at best.
But New York’s inability to prevent stretches of in-game freefall has been one of the biggest issues, and it speaks to problems beyond on-ice ability. This is simply a team that does not have the resolve it needs to to be successful. It showed it during the 5-14-0 rut earlier in the year, and it’s showed it in spurts since.
Coach Jon Cooper and the Lightning, meanwhile, pair on-ice skill with toughness and fortitude. They’ve shown it by winning two Stanley Cups this decade and making a third Final. Cooper loved his team’s ability to stack goals together in the first period but added that “in a couple of weeks it’s not going to happen like that.”
That’s because it will be the playoffs, and teams like the Rangers won’t be there.
(Top photo of Yanni Gourde and Igor Shesterkin: Dennis Schneidler / Imagn Images)