The Rangers have lost two straight in regulation for the first time since October. They have allowed four or more goals in consecutive games for the first time this season. And they have won just three of their last eight games (3-4-1) overall.
What does that mean for a team that was embarrassed 6-2 by the Maple Leafs at the Garden last night, 72 hours after losing an equally mortifying 4-0 match at home to the Hurricanes on Monday?
It means that the Blueshirts are not only in third place in the Atlantic Division heading into tonight’s match in Atlanta, but they’re just another bad week away from sinking into the Eastern quagmire of clubs between 11h and 14th place.
“Monday you could say that it could have been different with a little bit of luck, but not tonight,” said Jaromir Jagr, who was barely a blip on the radar screen over his team’s last 120 minutes of hockey. “Tonight, the legs weren’t there. We weren’t winning battles.
“It wasn’t good.”
Henrik Lundqvist, pulled after two periods in which he allowed four goals on 10 shots, never seemed comfortable. He fought the puck from start to (his) finish.
“I don’t know what to say,” said the defrocked King. “Even on a couple of plays where they didn’t score, I still made poor decisions, and I don’t know why.
“I know I have to play better than I did tonight, for sure.”
Lundqvist’s clunker did not help, but the Rangers never looked as if they had the ingredients to take the match, not even after scoring two power-play goals off nifty Scott Gomez feeds within 2:34 late in the first to go into intermission tied at 2-2.
“I felt the team was tight, and fighting off the frustration of not being able to pull away,” said Tom Renney. “Right now, I’m [angry] and a little perplexed.
“We have a lot of stake-holders in this process of preparing to win, so this sort of baffles me. I know how sincere they are, so I’m kind of scratching my head right now.”
The Rangers have played two straight in which their top line has been dominated. On Monday, Jagr, Martin Straka and Brandon Dubinsky couldn’t handle the Eric Staal unit. Last night the Mats Sundin-Alexei Ponikarovsky-Nikolai Antropov trio had its way, with Antropov getting three and Sundin scoring one.
Monday, Renney stood pat. Last night, he moved Chris Drury between Jagr and Straka in the third while shifting Ryan Callahan onto the unit with Gomez and Brendan Shanahan. Nothing developed.
Look, even if the responsibility for this does not fall upon the 21-year-old Dubinsky – paging the captain – it also reinforces the notion the Rangers aren’t likely to go very far into the spring with the rookie matched against the opposition’s first line.
It underlines the evolving folly of the Rangers spending $14M annually on centers Gomez and Drury.
Gomez had it going last night, maybe for the first time this year. He was on the puck, jumping, sniffing. But he somehow had only 9:32 of ice after the second period.
Leafs 6 Rangers 2