The Rangers showed us who they are throughout the season by overcoming every obstacle and finishing with the best record in the NHL.
Now they will have to do the same again.
And they will have to try again and again to get a win in this second round against the Canes, as they emerged as frauds, dropping favorites 4-1 in Game 5 at the Garden on Monday. Dew.
The Rangers lacked mobility. They lacked energy. They seemed numb to the opportunity to advance. They were at least one step slower than their opponents. They turned the 50s-50s into the 30s-70s in the wrong way. They were disconnected and, for the most part, disconnected.
Do you know what it looked like? It was like Game 7 of the 2015 conference finals. The Blueshirts got their second consecutive shutout win at home, barely coming off a tear before defeating Tampa Bay at the Garden 2-0. That night was the worst, and this one was the worst.
Perhaps more importantly, do you know what else it looked like? A typical Rangers game is in December or January. It looked almost exactly like that.
And it was great.
“This wasn’t a reflection of who we were for most of the year,” said a rather gloomy head coach Peter Laviolette. “Tonight wasn’t for us.”
Laviolette was behind the bench for the 2010 Flyers, who came from a 3-0 deficit to defeat the Bruins, becoming one of only five teams in North American professional sports history to accomplish the feat. So he knows he can make it happen. He knows how things can go wrong quickly and irrevocably. He’s not the only one.
“Anytime you don’t perform to your ability, that worries you,” the coach said. “But this group has had matches like this before, and they have responded. There is responsibility within themselves and from nothing. [staff] I’ll bring them. ”
If you start from the top, you will start from the top 6 that was dominated by the competition. A year ago — no one wanted the New Jersey Series mentioned — the club’s best players were at the root of the problem. Perhaps that’s not the case with these two losses, but finishing in the top six wasn’t the answer either.
In fact, Mika Zibanejad looked bad after taking a no-call spear from Brent Burns early in the second period, but he made a bad change to open up a lane for Jordan Staal, three minutes into the game. He beat Braden Schneider on the outside for the tying goal at 33 seconds. number 3.
Then, just over three minutes later, a 150-foot contest between Artemi Panarin and Evgeny Kuznetsov hit the ice, with Kuznetsov on No. 10, knocking in the rebound for a 2-1 lead at 6:39. Rangers were down by one goal, but it was as if they had scored 12 goals. They posed little threat. They never forced Frederick Andersen to do hard labor.
Staal had the upper hand. Alexis Lafreniere, not so much. Vincent Trocheck, not quite. Rangers led 1-0 after 40 minutes, but had little chance of getting a shutout.
“I think we sacrificed some of our D-zone structure by working harder and not smarter, which is something we haven’t done all series,” he said on an unforgettable night. said Chris Crider, another marquee who spent . “When we stepped it up, we weren’t exactly like that.” [play] Detailed hockey. ”
Obviously, there was some X’s and O’s on both 5-on-5 and special teams. The Blueshirts opened the series by converting four of their first six power play chances. Since then, they have lost 11 times in a row, including this 0-for-3 in which the Canes beat the Rangers multiple times to the puck.
The Rangers weren’t sharp. The Rangers were not in an emergency.
Rangers showed no respect for themselves.
They’ll get another chance Thursday in Game 6 in Raleigh, North Carolina.
They are given another chance to show us who they are.
They get another chance to be Rangers.
