Rangers still in playoff hunt despite slew of bad losses
Anaheim Ducks center Mason McTavish scores past Rangers goaltender Igor Shesterkin during overtime of an NHL game in Anaheim, Calif., on Friday. Credit: AP/Alex Gallardo
As much as they’ve struggled lately, the opportunity was there for the Rangers to climb into a playoff spot late Friday night.
By the time they faced off against the Anaheim Ducks, they knew that Montreal already had lost — for the fifth straight time — and that a victory would lift them over the Canadiens and Columbus Blue Jackets and into the Eastern Conference’s second wild card.
All they had to do was beat a Ducks team filled with Rangers cast-offs, featuring ex-captain Jacob Trouba and former teammates Ryan Strome and Frank Vatrano.
Instead, against a team that isn’t going anywhere near the playoffs, the Rangers came up small yet again, blowing a late two-goal lead in the third period before losing in overtime, 5-4.
And what does a loss like that do to their playoff hopes?
Well, to quote the great Jim Mora: “Playoffs? You kidding me? Playoffs?’’
OK, that’s not entirely fair. Technically, the point they “earned’’ Friday night pulled them into a three-way tie with Columbus and Montreal for the final playoff spot in the East.
And they moved past both of those teams Saturday night by defeating the Sharks, 6-1, in San Jose. The Rangers are 35-32-7 for 77 points, two more than the Canadiens (33-30-9) and the Blue Jackets (33-30-9).
The bad news for the Rangers? They have played two more games than those two teams. They have eight games left in which to accumulate points, and Montreal and Columbus have 10 each.
The way Montreal (0-3-2 in its last five) and Columbus (2-7 in its last nine) have been playing, we can’t quite write the Rangers off just yet, even if they are 2-4-1 in their last seven games.
Credit them for rebounding against San Jose, but their loss to Anaheim makes it crystal-clear that the Rangers, the Presidents’ Trophy winners last year as the best team in the regular season, are just not a good team. Adam Fox said so himself in the locker room after Friday night’s game.
“Good teams do not lose a game like that,’’ the Jericho native said. “In the third [period] we had, what, four power plays? Five power plays? Just, yeah, that can’t happen.’’
The Rangers led 3-1 going into the third period before Leo Carlsson, a 20-year-old from Sweden who was the No. 2 overall pick in the 2023 draft, scored at 2:22 to cut it to 3-2.
Mika Zibanejad scored the Rangers’ first power-play goal in eight games to put the visitors up 4-2 at 4:35. And 21 seconds later, Anaheim’s Troy Terry got called for a tripping penalty. Twenty-four seconds after that, the Ducks got called for too many men on the ice, giving the Rangers a five-on-three advantage for 1 minute, 36 seconds.
They should have put the game away right then and there. But they didn’t even get a shot on goal.
One attempt by Artemi Panarin was blocked. The next two by him were wide. After the first penalty expired, J.T.’s Miller shot was blocked, Fox’s shot was wide and Vincent Trocheck’s shot was blocked.
The Rangers got two more power plays after that but couldn’t score. They were 1-for-7 with the man advantage and are 1-for-20 in their last eight games and 2-for-35 in their last 13.
Goals by Cutter Gauthier at 14:12 and Olen Zellweger, at 18:15, just after a Rangers power play expired, forced overtime, and Mason McTavish’s goal 59 seconds into OT won it for Anaheim.
“Power plays, for me, is a big thing, that we can’t close a game,’’ a disgusted-sounding Zibanejad said. “We should have been able to close a game with the chances that we had, and chances that we got on the power play. And we didn’t.’’
The Rangers absolutely still have a chance to emerge from the pack and grab the last wild-card spot if they can come through and win some big games in the next 2 1⁄2 weeks.
They did play well Saturday night. But after Friday’s loss, after that awful no-show against Calgary on the last homestand and after all the bad losses they had before that, and considering the fact that they haven’t won three games in a row since November, what evidence is there to suggest they’ll be able to do that?
Colin Stephenson covers the Rangers for Newsday. He has spent more than two decades covering the NHL and just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
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