Rangers crushed by Flyers after Chris Kreider gut punch
PHILADELPHIA — Their faces told the story far more than their words.
The Rangers looked tired and beaten, expectedly sulking after a 5-2 loss to the Flyers on Friday night that represented something distinctly worse than a broken a five-game winning streak or the end to a franchise-best nine-game road winning streak. It represented something even worse than not making up ground on their playoff chances.
It was the game when Chris Kreider fractured his foot blocking a shot, with the ink on his new seven-year, $45.5 million contract having hardly dried before the veteran spirit on and off the ice of this recent joyful run now may be lost through the end of the regular season.
“It’s tough,” said Kreider’s center, Mika Zibanejad, his head lowered and his voice soft. “I don’t know how to put it into words, really. Obviously a key player and a key guy in the locker room and on the ice, and for our line and the rest of the team.”
Zibanejad then paused, and summed it up: “This sucks.”
There was no immediate update from coach David Quinn on a possible timetable for Kreider’s injury, but an average broken foot takes four-to-six weeks to heal and the Rangers’ regular season has 18 more games over the next five weeks, ending on April 4.
That is less time than it took for the Rangers (35-25-4) to get themselves back to within striking distance of the second wild-card spot, having won nine of their previous 10. But they stayed two back of the also-defeated Blue Jackets, while tied in points with the Hurricanes. But the Flyers (37-20-7) of Alain Vigneault and Kevin Hayes were relentless once Kreider left the game — whether that was an actual letdown for the Blueshirts or not.
“You can spin this however you want, but just overall, we just didn’t play as good as we needed to,” said Zibanejad, who was a minus-four and had a six-game goal streak broken. “Obviously it doesn’t help when [Kreider] has to leave the game. But, still, we have to manage to do a better job.”
The Rangers had been at a critical juncture with the 28-year-old Kreider on Monday, either having to sign him to a new deal or likely trade him before the 3 p.m. deadline. His annual salary-cap hit of $6.5 million is more about stewarding this team into competitiveness — both on and off the ice — in the years to come. This little playoff push was a nice add-on, but now it seems emotionally derailed.
“You lose one of your top forwards, one of your older guys who’s a veteran who means an awful lot to us,” Quinn said, “it hurts.”
The play happened when Kreider stepped in front of a right-point bomb from defenseman Philippe Myers with 7:40 remaining in the first period. The puck struck Kreider on the outside of his left skate, and he went to the ice in a heap. But the severity of the injury wasn’t immediately clear, as he skated off, then even had a brief 10-second shift before heading to the locker room and not returning.
The club released the news near the start of the second period, and as the shockwaves reverberated around the league, very quickly their team was mincemeat. James van Riemsdyk scored on a long rebound at 13:00, and Claude Giroux scored his first of two at 15:05 to take a 3-1 lead. Giroux got his second on a power-play snipe at 2:36 of the third before Hayes got his 22nd of the season at 12:56, making it 5-1.
“We have to move forward from that game,” said Alexandar Georgiev, who made 35 saves and now has started three road games in four days after Igor Shesterkin suffered a broken rib in a car accident. “We had a pretty good run, and things like that happen sometimes. We were running on empty.”
The game started with a Jesper Fast goal 2:49 in — equalized by Sean Couturier’s tally near the end of the first — and it finished with Brett Howden getting one in garbage time to make it 5-2. But finding the good on a night like this is akin to spitting into the wind.
“We’re going to miss [Kreider],” Georgiev said. “For sure.”