It was a performance that was not even worth the 24 hour wait, let alone the 313 days between the Rangers’ appearance in the Garden.
But then it can not even count as an appearance by the Blueshirts – who drew a non-performance in the season opener, and lost 4-0 to an island team that essentially took a 60-minute walk through on Thursday. had the park.
If you’re looking for an excuse for this debacle – in which Igor Shesterkin allowed goals on the third, fifth and seventh shots he faced while his teammates were having a lollipop gagged – do not bother.
There are no excuses for the Rangers, but the outrage that they are being kicked out of the building has been spared because customers are not allowed in the garden. It was an amateur performance by a team that was not prepared to compete against the finalists of the conference.
Check it out. The Rangers were not willing to compete, period. If you do not believe me, you would probably rather hear it from David Quinn – who, if you think about it, bears much more responsibility for this than I do.
“I thought we went back to doing some things we did in the bubble,” the coach said. ‘If you cheat the game … there are no shortcuts in this game, no shortcuts. We played heaps of hockey.
“We just were not prepared to play the right way. We allowed them to get in position all night because we did not skate. We did not play with the right intentions. There was not much good tonight, that’s for sure. ”
It’s almost impossible to evaluate the Rangers’ structure or system or willingness to play simplified straight hockey from this fiasco – whereby one player after another committed the most fundamental mistakes.
Failed cross-ice passes, indifferent turnover, failure to compete for loose pucks, inability or unwillingness to win one-on-one and a lack of discipline were routine in the first defeat for the exclusions of the opening night since the horrific group of 1998-99 dropped to a 1-0 game against the Flyers
Shesterkin faltered in the first period, perhaps not guilty of one of the three that beat him within a time of 10:58, but was unable to make a big save once Brock Nelson came out at 2:33 the slot has not passed. A two-to-one follows 1:19 later, after which Anders Lee hits one from the left on a play that begins behind the island net. And then the amazing Mat Barzal knocks the goalkeeper down from the top right and sneaks through a companion.
An empty building meant that Shesterkin, the eye of everyone during his debut run last season, did not have to suffer what the inevitable chants of ‘Henrik … Henrik’ would have been. But the 25-year-old Russian has shown the backbone of the last 40 minutes and asserted himself with a handful of amazing stopping places. It was one of the few positive aspects of the night, though it must be assumed that Alex Georgiev will get the nod for Saturday’s rematch on Broadway.
K’Andre Miller had a very nervous time in his first pro competition other than an intrasquad investigation. Alexis Lafreniere was not so exposed to his fellow rookie and played at an encouraging pace, even getting shifts with Ryan Strome and Artemi Panarin when Quinn messed up his line combinations and started moving Kaapo Kakko around.
But do not make the mistake of believing that youth and inexperience were the most important factors in the fiasco in which Semyon Varlamov was so rarely tested that there was no reason to even mention the name of the islanders’ goalkeeper until late in the report.
Panarin and Strome were completely ineffective, except for a few power plays in which the first unit controlled the puck and zipped into the offensive zone for a good minute or longer, although they could not create a golden opportunity. Chris Kreider was not much of a factor. Jacob Trouba, caught at the blue line during the first period by a strange man who scored the 2-0 goal for Lee, looked in between. Adam Fox had a difficult night.
So does Tony DeAngelo, who exacerbates his problems by taking an unsportsmanlike conduct on top of a foul. Brendan Lemieux played only one innings in the first period and is responsible for big stumps from the second rankings after being responsible for too much offense. The Rangers were cut short eight times.
Mika Zibanejad was perhaps the Blueshirts’ best. Pavel Buchnevich worked hard. Filip Chytil had a few moments. Okay, here we go for a bit of positivity in a forest of 60 minutes of frustration and failure.
It was only one night, that’s true, of course. But it is also the only night on which the Rangers can be measured 2020-21. The Blueshirts waited more than ten months to get back to the garden. They should not have bothered.