Rangers were not at their best until the final stages of the season.
And the in-game determination and resiliency they’ve shown in recent weeks was on display Monday night when they lost 5-2 to the Penguins at Madison Square Garden, giving the Blueshirts an impressive fifth straight win. It was too little, too late. The winning streak has stopped.
It was the Rangers’ fifth loss since early March, when they went 10-3-1 against the NHL’s top teams.
The Penguins, ranked 22nd in the league and second-last in the Metropolitan Division at the start of the game, are not the team they were just two seasons ago. This is not the team they were when they lost the series lead to the Rangers, 3-1. in the first round of the 2022 playoffs.
But while Pittsburgh looked like a team fighting for pride, the Rangers never looked like they were fighting for anything.
“Overall it just wasn’t our night,” Jimmy Vesey said. “You can’t expect a team to score two goals and win in this league. I think being down two goals early changes the whole dynamic of the game. If you’re following the game, you can’t expect a team to score two goals and win. It opens up a lot of possibilities. We made a little too many mistakes tonight.”
The Rangers chased the puck all night.
Their matches didn’t have much, if any, emotion.
As a result, the penguins used up their energy and were free to spend most of the night.
Head coach Peter Laviolette described the game as a typical Pittsburgh game, saying the Penguins “played a pretty good game” with captain Sidney Crosby’s 3-point shooting.
Despite the fact that two of the Penguins’ goals came from an empty net, the Rangers have conceded five goals in three of their past four games.
The Rangers pushed a bit in the third period, but Kaapo Kakko and Jack Roslovic scored at 6:11 to make it a one-point game with just over three minutes left, but the Penguins never lost control. . of the game.
Rangers captain Jacob Trouba handed the ball over to the visitors with 18 seconds to play, but his shot in the defensive zone ended up in the back of the net by Igor Shesterkin on his first shift.
“It was a big mistake to give up a big goal in the game,” Trouba said. “That can’t happen, and it’s no one’s fault but mine.”
The Rangers had their worst period in a while until the first 20 minutes of the game.
Trailing 2-0 on goals from Brian Rust and Crosby, the Blueshirts were completely out of sorts in the defensive zone and couldn’t create much in the offensive zone.
The Rangers also contested Crosby’s goal for offside, but lost and were forced to go down by one.
In their second game back as a defensive duo, Trouba and Quandre Miller scored three of the Penguins’ five goals.
Trouba’s defensive zone giveaway that led to the final 1-0 score was the first of nine turnovers committed by the Rangers in the first period alone.
The Rangers finished the night with a whopping 11 giveaways in addition to the Penguins.
Mika Zibanejad’s goal on a power play early in the second period might have been a different game, but the referee immediately ruled it out for goaltender interference.
During the play, Chris Kreider’s right skate got in the way of Penguins goaltender Alex Nedeljkovic.
“They said no, so we canceled it,” Laviolette said. “I didn’t challenge it. I thought Claeys was doing a great job up front, but his feet were in the paint and tangled up in the pads. Being in the paint was crucial for me. I think that was a factor.”
