OTTAWA, Ontario — The Rangers are starting to show a little more than just frustration. They’re starting to show anger at their own befuddling inconsistency.
This mercurial team put up an absolute dud, a 4-1 loss to the Senators on Friday night that struck a nerve with the players and coaches alike. It washed away the thoughts of their terrific win over the visiting Capitals on Wednesday and drilled home their own deficiency at putting forth a consistent effort.
“This is as disappointing as it’s been,” said coach David Quinn, barely able to keep himself from boiling over after the game. “I thought we were actually going in the right direction, building off a couple really good wins for us. But we’re back to square one.”
There was not a lot the Rangers (9-9-2) carried over from Wednesday’s 4-1 win over Washington, which had them skating and making smart plays and competing. In this one, they grossly mismanaged the puck, they were sluggish in movement and decisions, and they allowed the Senators (11-11-1) to operate without much interference up and down the ice.
“An abysmal game in so many ways,” Quinn said. “They won every foot race. They won every 1-on-1 battle. The trend for us [is] when we start feeling good about ourselves, we don’t do a really good job of handling that.”
For the early part of this season, a lot of dips were attributed to them being such a young team that was learning how to deal with the ups and downs of a game — forget a season. But it’s not solely the young guys who are bothering Quinn. It is, well, everybody.
“I was unhappy with everybody,” Quinn said. “Everybody. The lapses were every single guy in the lineup.”
That angst was also prevalent in the locker room. The doors were closed for a while after this one, and surely a few harsh words were doled out. But that has happened before, too, and the problem persists.
“We beat a good team, regardless of who we play next, we think it’s just about throwing our sticks out there and [we] can out-skill a team,” Chris Kreider said. “I feel like I’m a broken record at this point, because I talk about it after every win, and then again after every loss following a pretty good win. We know the formula. We buy in one game, and we get away from it the next. It’s been like this for the past few weeks, and we have to stop the bleeding.”
The bleeding began in this one when Thomas Chabot scored just 57 seconds into the game — and it hardly got any better. The Rangers’ horrid penalty kill allowed two more goals, the first of Logan Brown’s career at 6:32 of the first to make it 2-0, and one by old pal Anthony Duclair on a 5-on-3 man-advantage that made it 4-1 at 13:24 of the second, turning the second half of the game into something as interesting as a free skate.
“I just think we have guys that obviously don’t understand how hard it is in this league,” Quinn said. “And it’s not our young players. It’s guys that have been in the league before. These guys have to step up and deliver in situations like this.”
The only moment of hope for the Rangers came when Senators goalie (and former Islander) Anders Nilsson whiffed on a harmless Jacob Trouba wrist shot and deflected it into his own net, making it 2-1 going into the second period. But Tyler Ennis needed 71 seconds into the second before he walked right through the heart of the Rangers’ defense and lifted one over Henrik Lundqvist’s glove to make it 3-1.
“If you don’t pay attention to every detail in your game, it’s going to be up and down,” Lundqvist said. “It’s going to be a fight.”
It’s the same, over and over, and it’s anyone’s guess which Rangers team is going to show up Saturday night in Montreal.
“You try everything,” Quinn said. “You try shaking lines up, you try yelling and screaming, you try coddling. I just have to keep trying to find ways to do it.”