After a three game win streak, the Rangers fall to the Penguins 5-1 in a disappointing Sunday night showdown. Despite a couple bright moments, the Blueshirts simply could not compete with this Pittsburgh team who very much came to play. However, it didn't appear to be the case at the start of the game, just 78 seconds in, Mika Zibanejad found himself on a 2 on 1 with Alexis Lafreniere. Instead of making the pass, Mika kicked his leg, faked the shot and got goaltender Casey DeSmith to bite completely as he let a shot go top shelf to make it 1-0, perfectly executed. The Rangers should've been all over the Penguins and Casey DeSmith, who has only played in two games prior all season. This unfortunately, wouldn't be the case.
There was a lot of talk leading up to this game on how David Quinn would utilize his second and third string goalies in the absence of Igor Sheshterkin, primarily in this weekends back to back play. While it may not have been the right move in hindsight, it was the smart and easy decision to run with Alexandar Georgiev back to back. Goalie Guru Stevie V even broke it down in pre game how Georgiev is one of the best east to west goalies in the league and the Penguins play that style quite often. Unfortunately, with less than four minutes left in the first, John Marino let a wrist shot go past Georgiev in what appeared to be a weaker goal for him to let up, despite potentially being screened on the play. Just 39 seconds later, Kasperi Kapanen found himself on a breakaway and put a quick wrist shot following a subtle deke past Georgiev to take the lead. Then 22 seconds after that, Sidney Crosby enters the chat and puts a shot past Georgiev's glove on a partial breakaway, three goals in a very short period of time.
David Quinn would call a timeout and pull Georgiev for Keith Kinkaid, who hasn't seen NHL action since 2019. All the more reason to justify hesitation in having him start this game. He wouldn't see much action to end the period or to start the second but once Jake Guentzal entered the slot with a quality scoring chance, Kinkaid surprised everyone and had a pretty stellar performance for the remainder of the game, doing everything he could to keep the Rangers alive. The team had moments of spark and energy, however second period penalties interrupted those waves. Again, we've talked about this before but David Quinn leads the league in too many men penalties and it seems like this is a constant problem for him and his team. Have to wonder how much of that, if any, is really his fault but nevertheless the Rangers don't win many games when they take costly penalties like this.
As previously mentioned, the Rangers had spurts and moments where they looked like they could climb back into it but Pittsburgh played too solid of a game to allow that. Other than Mika's goal and almost goal, the team really didn't test DeSmith or put any pressure on him. Malkin would score on an odd man rush later in the third, nothing Kinkaid could've really done there. Zach Acton-Reese would score on a weird bounce from behind the net, a goal Kinkaid probably should've stopped but at 4-1 with four minutes left and the way this game was going, it didn't really matter. I mentioned earlier that if the Rangers could win three out of their four games against Pittsburgh and Boston, they would be in tremendous shape. They are really going to have to dig deep in they want to stick to that success plan.
Again, it will be very interesting to see how Quinn handles the goalie situation going into the next game. Sheshterkin has began skating again but there has been no word yet on a timetable for his return. The easy answer here looks to be ride Keith Kinkaid who played well for the most part but as we learned last night, the easy answer isn't always the right answer. David Quinn seems to trust his players and if that's the case, don't be surprised for him to come right back with Georgiev on Tuesday and trust that he'll bounce back. For what it's worth, Jacob Trouba's return to the lineup certainly helps this team on the back end. As for Colin Blackwell being scratched for Phil Di Giuseppe, I think he needs to return to the lineup tomorrow to give this team a spark but don't think Di Giuseppe deserves to come out. It will be interesting to see what Quinn decides in that regard as well.
We'll know more potentially today but right now the Rangers need to look to get back to how they were playing prior to last night. They need a strong, physical and offensively aggressive rematch to this team that they seem to struggle playing against. The one bright side to certainly take away from this loss is Mika finding the back of the net and playing with some swagger again. You have to hope that he chases that and this team gets their 40 goal scoring number one center back .
Chris Feldman
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