Igor Shesterkin pulled, Rangers outplayed in home loss to Predators

Before Thursday night, it had seemed like the Rangers were becoming comfortable with all the new systems stuff first-year coach Peter Laviolette had installed in training camp. Folks were starting to dream about just how good the Blueshirts could be after having won two of their first three games.

But those good feelings didn't last Thursday night.

The Rangers laid an egg against the struggling Nashville Predators, a team that had lost three of their first four games.

“The all-around wasn’t good enough to win a hockey game,’’ Rangers defenseman Jacob Trouba said after the Blueshirts were soundly beaten, 4-1. “I think even if some nights, you find a way to win that game, that’s not a game that I felt we deserved to win at all. Yeah, definitely our worst game of the season so far.’’

The Predators scored the first four goals to chase Igor Shesterkin from the net in the final game before the Rangers embark on a five-city, 11-day road trip that begins in Seattle.

Cole Smith scored two first-period goals for the Predators (2-3) and Nashville added two more in the second period to make it 4-0.

Adam Fox got the Rangers on the board with a five-on-three power-play goal late in the second period. A goal by Vincent Trocheck with 8:00 remaining that would have cut the deficit to 4-2 was wiped out after Nashville challenged the play for offside. The goal was overturned after video review showed that Trocheck was offside.

“I just thought they were a step ahead of us,’’ Fox said. “They seemed quicker to pucks, winning battles. And I thought they were just the better team today.’’

“We didn’t do enough of a lot of things to be successful tonight, so that’s frustrating and disappointing,’’ Laviolette said. “I thought that our speed was off. I thought that our ‘compete’ was off. And we’re talking about trying to play a faster game, a game that goes ‘north’ fast. I thought we just took that away from ourselves with puck decisions, and things that we did to slow things down, turn pucks over.’’

After having scored first in each of their first three games, the Rangers fell behind 2-0 in the first period after Smith scored his first two goals of the season. The first came at 11:24 when he tapped in the rebound of a shot by Michael McCarron that was lying behind Shesterkin, who started his fourth game in a row.

Smith’s second goal came at 16:22 when he came out of the penalty box to capitalize on a turnover by K’Andre Miller, whose pass skipped over Erik Gustafsson’s stick and went right to Smith, who was in on a two-on-none break. He beat Shesterkin with a snap shot.

Meanwhile, the Rangers were getting nothing going against Nashville goalie Juuse Saros, who entered with a 3.41 goals-against average and .887 save percentage. They managed just five shots on Saros in the opening period and 25 for the game.

Things would get worse for the Rangers before they got better. Fox’s second hooking penalty of the game led to Ryan O’Reilly’s power-play goal that put Nashville up 3-0 at 3:32 of the second period. Juuso Parssinen had a chance to make it 4-0 when he had a clean breakaway, from the red line in, but Shesterkin closed the 5-hole on him at 5:52.

“We . . . gave up eight odd-man rushes tonight and two breakaways,’’ Laviolette said. “You’re just not going to find success unless you button that up.’’

Artemi Panarin took a high sticking penalty at 13:16 and Filip Forsberg scored on a slap shot at 13:51 to make it 4-0. Laviolette replaced Shesterkin with Jonathan Quick, who made his Rangers debut. Shesterkin stopped 14 of 18 shots.

The Rangers scored when Parssinen and O’Reilly took tripping penalties late in the period, giving the Rangers a 5-on-3 power play for a minute and 34 seconds. Fox scored his first goal of the season with 41.2 seconds left in the period.

By Colin Stephenson

colin.stephenson@newsday.comColinSNewsday

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.