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Rangers lay egg in DC, fall 5-1 to Capitals on Opening Night

October 14, 2021, 10:15 AM ET [207 Comments]
Jan Levine
New York Rangers Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
The Rangers opened the 2021-22 season with a dud, falling 5-1 to the Capitals. Hard to find a lot of positives in defeat. New York gets a chance at quick redemption, this time in front of the home crowd at MSG, as they take on the Stars tonight.

Game recap:


A recipe for disaster:
1) After a decent first half of the game, the Rangers still trailed 1-0 but they had played moderately well, despite not generating many offensive chances. The second half of the game was a fry from that, as they were outscored 4-1 and outplayed substantially.

Larry Brooks summarized just how bad it was:
Trailing 1-0 after the first period on the first of three Washington power-play goals and then 2-0 at 12:38 on another PPG and 3-0 just 24 seconds later, the Blueshirts went the final 18:41 of the second period without an even-strength shot on goal. They went 13:33 without a shot of any kind from 3:50 to 17:23, finishing with five for the middle 20 minutes.


2) Special teams: The Capitals were 3-for-6 on the power play. The Rangers were 1-for-5. New York's one goal came about when the score was already 4-0. The Blueshirts changed penalty kill personnel this year, losing Pavel Buchnevich and Brendan Smith, adding Parick Nemeth while also incorporating several others while shorthanded. This area is still a work in progress.

3) Penalties: New York came in with the mindset that they needed to be physical and aggressive. For all the hype of facing Tom Wilson and the inclusion of Ryan Reaves, Sammy Blais and Jarred Tinordi to the lineup, there were no fights and no incidents. But the Rangers had a parade to the box, taking nine penalties, the lion share of them unnecessary, with Blais taking three minors. Stay out of the damn box and be a lot smarter on the ice. But hey, they won the hits battle, so there is that.

4) The top-six were poor: New York won't go anywhere if the top-six doesn't play well. The bottom six has pretty much morphed into a checking and physical line with little offense expected, save for maybe Chytil and the potential double-digit production from Blais and/or Barclay Goodrow. But the days of the third line being an additional scoring line or a checking line that also has the ability to score has been blunted with the construction of the trio. Though I do think they can contribute a bit.

We didn't see a whole heck of a lot from Mika Zibanejad, Artemi Panarin, Alexis Lafrenière, and only a bit more from Ryan Strome and Kaapo Kakko. Chris Kreider not only scored the only goal, but he threw his weight around a bit, but much of that was too little, too late. To summarize, as Brooks noted: "neither Mika Zibanejad nor Artemi Panarin was credited with a shot, that the top six forwards that also feature Chris Kreider, Kaapo Kakko, Ryan Strome and Alexis Lafreniere combined for a sum of six shots at even strength."

That basically is inexcusable. The narrative that Zib doesn't produce against top teams was brought up again, but that conveniently forgets he scored five times in one game against this team in the past. But that lack of production or even attempted production is downright embarrassing and unacceptable.

5) Alexandar Georgiev Not the reason why the Rangers lost the game but he sure as heck didn't steal the game for New York. I don't get why coach Gerard Gallant went with Georgiev, even with the back-to-back contests. It's not as if he was overworked this preseason, and if you want to use the argument that a fresh Igor Shesterkin in behind a tired team in front of him is better than having Georgive there, fine. but who says he can't start both games, why not have #1 between the pipes to start the season and it's a division rival, which should have more weight as to who starts.

6) Carp had some additional info on Vitali Kravtsov: This information coupled with what Larry Brooks reported the other day does not put the player in a good light. Part of this may be organization spin, with this info coming to light after the events the other day, so keep that in mind.

 Kravtsov was told, in no uncertain terms, that he needed to go down and work on his conditioning after his lower-body injury during training camp. If he did so, he’d be back up quickly.

He was also left home during the team bonding trip to Rhode Island to get treatment on that injury. So it wasn’t as lopsided as it appeared, or perhaps as I portrayed it. Still, I think the Rangers had to know that he might react this way. That’s no reason to give a youngster a job, and I didn’t think he was particularly good in his preseason games. I saw him turn over a puck to avoid a hit in Bridgeport, and the coach surely noticed it. And no, he does not have a European escape clause. That was only for the first year of his ELC.


7) Lineup: we get to see Nils Lundkvist make his Rangers debut, replacing Tinordi, you can fill in the blank as to my reaction. Blais didn't have a poor game, nor did Dryden Hunt. Given that it's the Stars and not the Caps and Tom Wilson, I wonder if Julien Gauthier gets in the lineup for Reaves.

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