I mean, it was bound to happen right? David Quinn’s 0-5 Sharks coming into the Garden to play his former team, of course they got the win. That’s the beauty of sports and unfortunately for the Rangers, it resulted in a pretty gutting performance. I jokingly tweeted over the summer when I was starved for hockey that “I would give anything to see the Rangers ice the puck three times in a row in the middle of the most boring second period against the freaking Sharks right now” and well, that’s basically what we got last night. According to Gerard Gallant in his post game comments, the Rangers had an “embarrassing” outing against the Sharks in a penalty filled night where they just seemed to completely forget how to play hockey.
The Rangers really only looked good in the first minute or two of the game where they completely dominated play but right from that first shot, James Reimer showed he wasn’t going to make it easy for New York. It wouldn’t be long for the penalties to start coming when less than a minute in, Luke Kunin took a dumb offensive zone interference penalty. While typically, power play opportunities are the Rangers strong suit, the Sharks are one of the best penalty kill teams early in the season and tonight was no exception. Whether it’s the Sharks being good short handed or David Quinn knowing exactly what to expect from the Rangers power play, they read the Blueshirts top unit like a book. Their fore-checkers were all over the Rangers, especially on the point which took away from Artemi Panarin and Adam Fox’s ability to really move the puck around.
One unsuccessful man advantage would lead to another before the calls started going the other way, giving the Sharks a man advantage. Sammy Blais got called for tripping and sure enough, Sharks captain Logan Couture found the back of the net to give his team an early lead on their first power play opportunity. Less than two minutes later, the Rangers got their third power play opportunity and once again, they came up empty. Within the first ten minutes of the game, eight penalties in minutes were collectively racked up by the Sharks and Rangers. Despite inevitably winning the game, it was a particularly bad night for Sharks forward Luke Kunin who sat in the penalty box for a total of six minutes throughout the night.
The Rangers took a one goal deficit to the first intermission but the team came out strong for the second as Filip Chytil, who along with his linemates were some of the lone highlights for the Rangers throughout the night, beat Reimer on a low wrist shot to tie the game up at one. About eight minutes later, Artemi Panarin gave the Rangers their one and only lead of the night off a nice slap shot for his third of the season. That goal keeps Panarin as the league’s point leader as he currently sits one point above Connor McDavid with 11 points. Nevertheless, the Rangers lead would be short lived as Radim Simek collected his first goal of the season off a wrist shot from the slot that may have traveled through some traffic to find the back of the net.
Outside of the spurt of goals, it was a relatively boring period and it seemed that the longer the game went on the more the Rangers started to fall apart. The teams exchanged penalties once more in the third but no one would capitalize forcing the game to overtime. Whatever it was, the Rangers just could not seem to crack the Sharks penalty killers. Luke Kunin’s third penalty of the night was a huge opportunity for the Rangers to get on the board and find a way to win a game they had little to no business winning but sure enough, it wouldn’t work that way. As time expired and the game headed to overtime, you had to think the Rangers would once again have the advantage as they match up pretty well against most teams in 3-on-3 overtime.
Boy would you be wrong. The Rangers won the face-off but could not maintain puck possession or complete a pass to save their life. An uncharacteristic night for Adam Fox, who did not have a good game, completely fumbled the puck, turning it over right in front of Shesterkin. Luckily, Igor made the save but after the Rangers fumbled yet another breakout, Erik Karlsson, who was in the process of falling, got the puck over to Timo Meier who went around the net and passed it back to Karlsson where he had a wide open net to shoot at as Igor was out of position and all three Rangers players were caught watching or just standing there. It was one of those plays where as a fan, you are a bit dumbfounded that a team as good as the Rangers can make such careless plays, completely blowing a game they had no business losing. However, at the end of the day, it’s a long season. There are going to be off nights like this one all that matters is not allowing it to become a habit or worse, a streak.
With how disappointed Gerard Gallant was with the Rangers efforts last night, you have to think there will be a fire lit under this group before they come out for their next game. Rangers Captain Jacob Trouba was equally dissatisfied with the team's efforts, quoting after the game that “ it’s not an offensive free-for-all, we have to play defense too.” Trouba also made it a point to say the team has to be better giving a full 60 minute effort and that will certainly be something they should focus on going into the next one. Luckily, they don’t have to wait too long as they’ll be back for a late afternoon match-up with the Columbus Blue Jackets. In addition to the importance of bouncing back after a bad game, this will be the Rangers first division match-up of the season, making those two points all the more important to get.
Sunday night’s game against Columbus will not only be the Rangers first divisional match-up of the season but the first game of the year I will be in attendance for! With that in mind, I likely won’t have a pregame piece as I’ll be traveling and getting ready to head to the city over the weekend. All you really need to know going into this one is Columbus is a team with lots of fresh superstar talent and some young pieces that very well could be super stars in this league in the not so distant future. The Rangers can not take this game lightly and need to come out strong, ready to play a full sixty minute effort. It will be interesting to see who, if anyone, comes out of the lineup to get Vitaly Kravtsov back in the mix as it doesn’t make any sense to let him rot away in the press box unless he still isn’t fully recovered. In any event, it should be a huge game for both parties involved and hopefully a much more entertaining one than what we saw last night.
Chris Feldman
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