The Rangers' win streak went by the wayside in a 5-3 loss to the Canucks on Tuesday. Some of the concerning signs that were evident the past few games all came home to roost Tuesday during the loss. The main issue - lack of time spent out of their own zone - which was like playing with matches but overwhelmed by the team's ability to score blew up in New York's faces against Vancouver.
The coaching staff highlighted these deficiencies but the team repeated the same mistakes Tuesday. That problem coupled with Vancouver taking away the transition zones resulted in the errors that were on display. Add in a subpar effort level and you have a recipe for the loss. As I said in the past, effort can beat talent when the talent lacks effort and that's what we saw Tuesday.
Ryan McDonagh said "[We were] shown a lot of clips and examples of us not being as sharp coming out and connecting the dots. Certainly tonight it cost us on a couple of goals, especially against a team like that that is real desperate and worked extremely hard. They came up with the puck battles a little bit more than we did and that's something we need to correct and obviously play better."
Tuesday night also saw coach Alain Vigneault felt the need to bench Jimmy Vesey and Chris Kreider for the second time in four games while shortening his bench throughout the third period. It looks as if Vesey and CK20 are the new whipping boys or players AV uses to make a point. AV could have also benched Mike Zibanejad, as he too had a poor game. I don't have an issue with benching Vesey and CK20 because the team as a whole have a C level effort and those two didn't stand out. To try and kickstart the effort level and chemistry, AV shook up the lines, which likely will occur for Saturday's game.
You can place some of the blame for the loss on the change in goalies from Antti Raanta to Henrik Lundqvist, but that would be a bit short sighted and not focused on the issues at hand. As noted in the papers and as we saw, Raanta was pulled out of a 2-2 game by league spotters with 11:33 remaining in the third period after he had taken a hard hit from Markus Granlund and smashed his head on the ice. Even though he had immediately remained in the game after being examined by trainer Jim Ramsay, at the next whistle, the league called down and had him yanked to go through the concussion protocol. The rule is in place to protect the players, so while in this case, it might have hurt the Rangers, overall, I have no issue with and am glad the rule is in place.
During the 6:19 of game time Raanta missed while going through concussion protocol, Lundqvist surrendered goals to Alexandre Burrows, due to a horrific turnover by Zibanejad, who was not good all night, and Sven Baertschi, who beat Derek Stepan to the front of the net, in a span of 3:47, giving Vancouver the 4-2 lead it would not surrender. On the first goal, Lundqvist made a good save on the first shot but Brady Skjei failed to clear the puck while on his knees and Zib was late getting to the crease to help out. On the second, maybe Dan Girardi shouldn't have gone down to block the pass, but the Jack Skille feed was gorgeous and Lundqvist didn't have much of a chance.
Call it a trap game if you will, but that's too easy of an explanation and an excuse. New York allowed a struggling team to hang around and they got burned. Girardi made this point after the game: "That team was struggling. If we establish ourselves in the first five minutes, the way we’ve been playing — use our speed, get pucks deep, cycle down low, play in the [offensive] zone — it might put a little doubt in their minds.… Despite the loss and some of the concerning issues from the past few contests, it still is just one game and it's silly to overreact to the one game. The problems noted above need to be fixed but the team is still 10-4 heading to Western Canada.
Due to the issues Tuesday and problems the past few contests, look for the lines to be shuffled and look like:
Chris Kreider, Mika Zibanejad, Pavel Buchnevich Rick Nash, Derek Stepan, Mats Zuccarello Jimmy Vesey, Kevin Hayes, JT Miller Michael Grabner, Brandon Pirri, Jesper Fast
The first and fourth lines are restored to how they opened the season before Kreider was sidelined with neck spasms and Buchnevich with a back issue. The second and third lines see the swap of Nash and Vesey. These trios are the ones we thought should be in place but the win streak precluded a change from occurring. Off a loss, it's easier to make this swap and I like the alterations.