Rangers' loss to Lightning leaves them six points back of final wild-card spot with five games to play
Igor Shesterkin and Adam Fox of the Rangers react after the Tampa Bay Lightning scored a goal during the first period at Madison Square Garden on Monday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
Five games remain in the regular season for the Rangers, and every one that clicks off the schedule draws them closer and closer to a long, sad summer.
Monday night’s 5-1 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning at Madison Square Garden kept the Rangers six points behind idle Montreal for the second and final wild-card playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. The Canadiens’ magic number to eliminate the Rangers is five, meaning any combination of points earned by Montreal or lost by the Rangers adding up to five will send the Blueshirts into the offseason.
“We’ve got to win the games,’’ Artemi Panarin said. “We’re not doing that. If we keep playing like that, we’ll miss the playoffs.’’
“I think we’ve just got to win out now,’’ forward Jonny Brodzinski said. “It’s no longer a waiting-it-out kind of thing where we win a game and we’re waiting to see what they do. We have to win out and we need help, too.’’
The odds of the Rangers (36-34-7, 79 points) winning their last five games are long. They haven’t won more than two games in a row since mid-November, and there are some heavyweights left on their schedule.
After Wednesday’s home game against the lowly Philadelphia Flyers, the Rangers are at the Islanders — who are battling as hard as the Blueshirts are to get into the playoffs — on Thursday, at Carolina on Saturday and at Florida on Monday before coming home to close the regular season against Tampa Bay on April 17.
Coming off Saturday’s damaging loss to the Devils in New Jersey, the Rangers played a pretty strong game against the Lightning (45-26-6, 96 points). They dominated possession for much of the game and outshot the Lightning 40-23, but their special teams again let them down.
This time it was the penalty kill, which allowed two power-play goals in the first period and three overall in four times shorthanded. Brayden Point had two of the Lightning’s power-play goals and set up the other by Nikita Kucherov.
The Lightning scored three goals within a 1-minute, 45-second span late in the first period to take a 3-0 lead that proved too much for the Rangers to overcome.
“I think that the last eight or nine minutes of the first period are where we lost the game tonight,’’ coach Peter Laviolette said.
The Rangers had gotten off to a fine start, generating chances in the first half of the first period, led by an energetic performance from the fourth line, with Matt Rempe making his return to the lineup alongside Brodzinski and Brennan Othmann. The three brought hustle and physicality and spent most of their shifts in the offensive zone.
But things turned when Tampa Bay’s Oliver Bjorkstrand took the game’s first penalty, sending the Rangers’ struggling power play (1-for-28 in the previous 11 games) onto the ice. The extra-man unit did have some chances and looked dangerous until Chris Kreider took a penalty of his own, wiping out the final 11 seconds of the man advantage.
Twenty-eight seconds into the Lightning power play, Kucherov tapped in Point’s feed to make it 1-0 at 13:09. Yanni Gourde made it 2-0 at 13:45 and Point scored on the Lightning’s second power play for a 3-0 lead at 14:54.
“A couple tough penalties and yeah, they get one, and there’s a breakdown, they get another, and it seems like it just kind of snowballed today,’’ forward Will Cuylle said. “That’s the big difference in the game, because before that . . . we were outplaying them the whole period.’’
The Rangers showed fight in the second period, dominating the shots-on-goal totals (18-5) and getting on the board on a power-play goal by Mika Zibanejad. Panarin’s pass banked in off his skate at 3:16 of the period.
The goal gave the Rangers life, and they pelted Tampa Bay goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy with rubber. They failed to get any closer before the intermission, though, and Point’s second power-play goal, at 15:40, made it 4-1.
Notes & quotes: Before the game, goalie Jonathan Quick was presented the Rod Gilbert Mr. Ranger award, given to the player “who best honors Rod’s legacy by exemplifying leadership qualities both on and off the ice and making a significant humanitarian contribution to his community.” . . . D K’Andre Miller, who missed practice Sunday because he was sick, did not dress. Zac Jones took his place in the lineup.
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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