The ugliest performances are the ones that are noncompetitive.
For almost all of the Rangers’ desultory 7-4 loss to the Bruins on Sunday night at the Garden, that’s exactly what they were. And the explanations of why were few and far between.
“I think part of being a professional athlete is handling adversity and understanding consistent battle level gives you a chance to have success. And I just think we have guys that don’t fully understand that,” coach David Quinn said. “They think the game should be played a different way, and it should be a skill game. Skill certainly is a huge component of this game, but if you have no battle, I don’t care how skilled you are, you’re not going to be productive.”
The Rangers (3-5-1) certainly added a lot of skill over the summer, but the lack of consistent effort is what has defined the early part of this season. All of the good feeling from their simple, hard-working 6-2 win over the Sabres on Thursday disappeared, that standing as the lone victory in the previous seven games.
In this instance, the Bruins’ (8-1-2) terrific top line just ran roughshod over the Blueshirts as Patrice Bergeron recorded a hat trick, Brad Marchand added two goals and three assists, and David Pastrnak had five assists. It was no help that the Rangers lost their top center, Mika Zibanejad, to an “upper-body” injury after the first period, and were without one of their best defensive forwards, Jesper Fast, missing the game due to personal reasons.
It left goalie Henrik Lundqvist hanging out to dry, allowing four goals on 31 shots through the first 40 minutes before he was mercifully replaced by Alexandar Georgiev at the start of the third.
Lundqvist was irate at the Bruins’ first goal, which started the second-period meltdown. Just 11 seconds into the period, Pastrnak jumped over sliding defenseman Libor Hajek, barreled into Lundqvist, and Bergeron lifted the puck in. It was reviewed and the on-ice call of a goal was upheld, bringing Lundqvist out of his net to skate after officials Brian Pochmara and Kyle Rehman. He had to be restrained by Chris Kreider.
That altercation was followed by Marchand scoring less than a minute later, then goals from Charlie Coyle and Marchand again making it 4-1 going into the third period.
“It comes down to battles; that’s how you win in this league,” Lundqvist said. “I feel in the second period, they did whatever they wanted to do.”
Mistakes of execution are a lot easier to swallow than a lack of consistent effort, but combine the two, and games like this occur.
“Breaks happen, and you just have to learn to ride it out, be smart with the puck, not give them anything. And we didn’t do that — at all,” said defenseman Marc Staal.
The Rangers were actually up, 1-0, on a goal from Micheal Haley in the first period — although they didn’t register a shot on goalie Jaroslav Halak until 10:19 in. It was still ugly, but getting out of a bad period with a lead could be a boost. Not this night.
“I felt like we didn’t play great, but we had a 1-0 lead and we come out in the second and just — we’re not even close to where we need to be,” Lundqvist said. “Not even close.”
So by the third period, chaos ruled. Pavel Buchnevich, Kreider and Brady Skjei all scored, but the Rangers never got closer than 6-4, with Bergeron finishing his hat trick into the empty net. At that point, the damage had been done.
“This game is all about what you can do when someone is trying to stop you from doing it,” Quinn said. “I don’t care what you can do in the driveway, I don’t care what you can do in practice. I don’t care how pretty all these plays [are] that you can make. You have to be able to make a play when someone is trying to stop you from doing it. And, in turn, you better try to stop someone else from making a play.
“We didn’t have any of that.”