The New York Rangers had their second rough game in a row, falling to the Boston Bruins 3-0. This was the second time in a row that the Rangers were blanked by this score, with the first coming three nights ago against the New York Islanders. This game wasn’t even close to be honest, and it started in the first period with lazy defensive coverage, bad/nonexistent forechecking, and slow skating.

Cam Talbot was fine in net, you can’t fault him for this one. The defense hung him out to dry on all three goals with some awful, awful play. Talbot bailed them out a bunch of times, but couldn’t stop them all.

The focus on Twitter was on faceoffs, but that’s just silly. The issue wasn’t faceoffs, the issue was bad defense and forechecking, and a nonexistent offense that barely generated quality chances. Tuukka Rask played well and did bail out the Bruins when they were faced with a few penalty kills.

On to the goals:

Bruins 1, Rangers 0

Yea, Derrick Brassard lost the faceoff. That’s not the issue here. The issue is that he took a nap after the initial shot and allowed Patrice Bergeron to get to the rebound uncontested.

Bruins 2, Rangers 0

This was another goal where the Rangers fell asleep. Watch them just chase and watch Torey Krug here. Ryan McDonagh is the worst culprit, following him all around the ice and completely deserting his man, David Krejci in front. Eventually Krug got it to Krejci for the easy goal.

Bruins 3, Rangers 0

Marc Staal, Dan Girardi, and Dom Moore all go to Carl Soderberg at the front of the net, but no one decides to put a body on Loui Ericsson at the back door. He had all day to roof it over Talbot.

Carl Hagelin post:

This is up here because there was a GIF available and there was something worth noting. Notice after the puck hits the post, it goes right by Dominic Moore, who had his stick in the air? That’s why your stick is always on the ice folks.

The Slewfoot:

Putting this one up here because Brad Marchand is just a bit dirty. Brassard is lucky he came away unscathed here. There wasn’t a GIF for the Chris Kreider hit, but that was a bad hit as well.

These charts are with 18:47 to go in the third period. War-on-ice didn’t update, and I had an early start to my Friday, so I needed to get to bed.

Fenwick Chart:

png

Ugly.

Scoring Chances:

png-1

Uglier.

Individual Corsi:

png-4

Back to ugly.

Shift Chart:

png-2

Alain Vigneault played with his lines halfway through this game. Not unexpected given Derek Stepan’s absence.

Shot Locations:

png-3Ugliest.

Two bad games in a row against division and conference playoff teams. Not exactly the best timing, but we knew some sort of regression would hit this team after spinning off 13 of 14 before this. The Rangers don’t have any time to regroup either, as they have the Columbus Blue Jackets, who are finally getting healthy, tomorrow night. That’s another team that plays more physical and less speed. Then again, so do the Kings. So, it’s a matter of execution.

All gifs courtesy of gifgoldmine.com.

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