Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images
After a tough loss on Saturday against the Devils, the Rangers had the Washington Capitals, a team that Henrik Lundqvist has absolutely owned over the past three meetings. As long as they put forth a solid effort, they should have at least come out with a point. But instead they forgot to show up, and allowed the Caps to walk all over them in their own building. After a scoreless first, the Rangers allowed the Caps to jump out to a 3-0 lead without much fight. After that, the Caps did a good job collapsing around the slot and protecting the house.
Henrik Lundqvist played a solid game last night, but the team in front of him made rookie Phillipp Grubauer look like Patrick Roy. There aren’t many positives for this game, and I’m going to avoid harping on negatives. But I will say this: The New York Rangers succeed as a team and they fail as a team.
On to the goals:
Caps 1, Rangers 0
This goal was a little bit on the weird side. John Moore blocked a shot while falling to the ice, and used his glove to shovel the puck out of the slot, but right to Martin Erat for the point-blank shot. Hank stopped that, but Jason Chimera was able to get body position on Justin Falk at the side of the net and was able to bang home the rebound.
Caps 2, Rangers 0
Dan Girardi gave the puck away to Jay Beagle behind the net, who fed Steve Oleksy at the point. Oleksy’s wrister was an innocent one, but there were bodies in the shooting lane and Hank didn’t even react until th shot was behind him. You can tell it was going to be one of those games after this goal.
Caps 3, Rangers 0
Whether or not you believe there should have been a penalty shot, it was called, and Mikhail Grabovski buried the penalty shot with a slapper over Hank.
Caps 4, Rangers 0
This was another one of those weird goals that Hank didn’t appear to see. The Caps had some good pressure, hitting a post on the shift, before Nate Schmidt collected the puck at the point with some room to move. Schmidt got a shot off through a screen at the top of the circle, and Eric Fehr was able to deflect it through Hank’s wickets.
To be fair, I didn’t even see the deflection. The initial goal breakdown I had noted the screens, but the goal was credited to Fehr, so he must have deflected it.
Rangers 1, Caps 4
This goal was all Michael Del Zotto. He started the play with a solid rush up the ice. MDZ got a low, hard shot on net from the boards, which Grubauer couldn’t freeze. As the battle for the loose puck in the high slot continued, MDZ circled all the way around the net and back to the left point, where he collected the loose puck and ripped a rising slapper. Benoit Pouliot got his stick on it to break up the shutout. The red arrows in the pictures are the path MDZ took for that goal.
Fenwick Chart:
Courtesy of ExtraSkater
This is pretty much what you would expect to see from last night’s game. The Caps didn’t register a shot for half of the first period, but then the Rangers stopped skating and the Caps took over the game. It wasn’t until late in the third the Rangers started closing the shot attempt gap.
Honestly, I’m just as frustrated as all of you are at this point. There has been no compete level at all, and the blame is all around. The leaders of this team need to take control, and will this team to victory. They need some strong efforts and some wins. Otherwise, we are looking at a team that will be 40-40-2 at the end of the year.
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