Rangers looking to tap into past resilience to snap losing streak
Does anyone remember the resilient Rangers?
That’s the team that scratched and clawed its way back from a 3-1 series deficit in the first round of the 2021-22 playoffs against the Penguins. It also climbed out of an 0-2 hole in the second round against the Hurricanes before winning Games 6 and 7 by a combined score of 11-4.
The genetic makeup of that playoff squad remains in the 2022-23 Rangers. When a team returns as many players from one season to the next as the Rangers have, those traits don’t just disappear.
So after they picked up their fourth straight loss Wednesday night on Long Island — the longest skid of the Chris Drury-Gerard Gallant era — the Rangers need to remember they have recovered from much worse.
Knowing that they’re just eight games into the season should help. The fact they were able to collect two points from overtime throughout the tough stretch should ease the pressure, as well. But there’s a mental challenge that comes with a prolonged winless streak and the Rangers will need to rise to that challenge in order to stop the current spiral.
“Trusting each other,” Mika Zibanejad said when asked what the key will be to mentally working through this tough stretch. “I think we’ve been here before. I think there’s a lot of good things that we’re doing out there. If we keep doing that, and we can do even more of that. Knowing how good of a team we are, I think that’s good, but also — I repeat myself all the time — we have to work through this. That’s the only way.
“Trusting that when we do the little things right, when we play the way we want to, more often than not, we’re going to get the points.”
The heavy burden the Rangers’ marquee players are carrying amid two injuries to their forward group is apparent. Without Vitali Kravtsov (upper body) and Filip Chytil (suspected concussion), the onus to produce has fallen on the first and second lines even more than it would with a healthy lineup.
When the top power-play unit is buzzing and the top six is consistently contributing on offense, the Rangers are at their best. That was evident during their 3-1 start to the season. In those three victories, the Rangers posted five power-play goals and the top two lines accounted for seven of their 16 total goals.
Once those aspects of their game went cold, so did the offense as a whole. It’s now up to the players to find other ways to score. Perhaps an ugly goal or two, as Gallant put it, would be beneficial.
The Rangers need more from Chris Kreider, who hasn’t scored since he put up two goals in the second game of the season against the Wild. And as reliant as the Rangers are on their top six for offense, the club also needs more from the fourth line, which hasn’t been the energy-providing unit it was designed to be.
Still, it’s only 2 ¹/₂ weeks into the season. The Rangers have bounced back from worse.
“Just got to work through this, we have no other choice,” Zibanejad said. “If I know this team — and I think I do — we’re not going to lay down and die, just give up. We’re going to keep working.”
The Rangers signed Ben Harpur to a one-year, two-way contract on Thursday before assigning the 27-year-old defenseman to AHL Hartford. It was a depth signing for a club who has been rotating between two young blueliners, Libor Hajek and Zac Jones, on the left side of its bottom pair.