SUNRISE, Fla. — One is enough for Rick Nash and the Rangers.
One loss, that is, even if the 2-1 defeat at Tampa Bay on Thursday marked the first after a nine-game winning streak and the team’s first in regulation since Oct. 15.
“I’ve been on a lot of teams that lost a lot of games and when that happens, it kind of becomes normal,” Nash — who went to the playoffs once in nine seasons with the Blue Jackets before coming to the Rangers over the summer of 2012 — told The Post on Friday after the Blueshirts’ practice in advance of Saturday’s game against the Panthers. “But here, after losing that one, the feeling is like we lost 10 in a row.
“We won nine, we lost one, but that loss isn’t sitting well with anyone in the room. It’s weighing on us.
“I like that.”
Coach Alain Vigneault was not surprised by the attitude that permeated the room.
“No doubt everyone is disappointed,” he said. “I could have put two defensemen on the ice [for the power play that began at 18:34 of third with the score tied] and played for the point.
“But I coached for the win and had the top guys out there,” he said of the strategy that no one questioned for a moment, not even after the Lightning got the short-handed winner at 18:54. “I don’t expect the guys to be happy with the result.”
Vigneault reasserted his belief the Rangers had played soundly in the match. But, following both that one and Sunday’s 4-3 victory over the Maple Leafs at the Garden — in which the Dom Moore-Jarret Stoll-Jesper Fast unit became the de facto third line in place of the Oscar Lindberg-Kevin Hayes-Viktor Stalberg unit, the coach acknowledged the team needs more from Hayes, particularly, and his wingers.
“I have so much belief in Kevin Hayes and his potential,” Vigneault said in somewhat of a non-sequitur when asked about the nominal third-line’s recent travails. “Oscar showed he could play at this level; Viktor, he was hungry and had a real strong training camp.
“The last couple, we haven’t gotten a lot out of that line and it starts in the middle,” Vigneault said of Hayes, who is the antithesis of the prototypical puck-moving, give-and-go dispatcher. “The wingers have to be able to be open and [the center] has to find them when they are open,
“We need more from [that line], but the fourth line was probably our best [at Tampa Bay].”
The lineup is expected to be the same for the year’s first meeting against the Puddy Tats. … Kevin Klein somehow escaped with only a welt on his inner right thigh after blocking a hellacious Steven Stamkos one-timer from the slot with 2:53 remaining in the third period of what was then a 1-1 game. Klein participated fully in the purposeful 25-minute practice.
The Blueshirts, 14-3-2, have not lost two straight on a road trip since late in the 2013-14 season, when they were defeated 3-1 in Carolina on Mar. 11, 2014 before losing 2-1 in Minnesota two days later.