The Florida Panthers kept up their recent form against the Rangers on Saturday night, setting a franchise record for consecutive wins with a shutout victory at home against New York. Although the Rangers led in shots there were few grade-A chances among them, with Florida’s defense largely containing the Rangers and the excellent Roberto Luongo handling the rest. All in all a tough loss for the Rangers, who despite a decent defensive performance let up three goals, giving the Panthers their record setting 8th consecutive win.
Panthers 1 Rangers 0
Following some heavy pressure in the Rangers end from the forechecking Panthers, Emerson Etem clears the puck out to the neutral zone intending to hit Chris Kreider with the breakout pass. Instead the puck is intercepted by Corban Knight coming though center ice, who then enters the Rangers zone coming down the wing. Right between the boards and the faceoff circle he lays a centering pass into the slot for Logan Shaw, who puts it home for the Panthers.
Panthers 2 Rangers 0
This play starts with a long stretch pass for the eventual goal scorer Vincent Trocheck. Entering the zone but covered by Marc Staal, he flips the pass cross-ice where it’s intercepted by Jussi Jokinen. Jokinen then works the puck back to the point for Brian Campbell, who then passes the puck down the blue line for Alex Petrovic. Petrovic moves in and rips the shot, which then hits Lundqvist, then Trocheck’s leg, and then finally finds the back of the net.
Panthers 3 Rangers 0
Emerson Etem takes a hooking penalty and puts Florida on the power play that leads to their third goal of the evening. Brian Campbell moves the puck from the point down to Reilly Smith at the half boards, who puts a quick pass across to Jokinen in the slot. Jokinen works it right back to Smith, who then sends it all the way across to Brandon Pirri, whose one timer gives Florida their third goal of the game.
Score Adjusted Corsi
Here we have one of the few positives from this game: the Rangers continued their recent improvement in puck possession, keeping it relatively even in the first period and then leading for the rest of the game in shot attempts. Despite out shooting the Panthers however, few of their shots were viable scoring chances, as we’ll see in our next chart.
Scoring Chances
This chart is a little more troubling for the Rangers because, taken together with the last chart, it demonstrates that the Rangers had a hard time putting together anything of value for all the shots the took. This pretty much sums up why the Rangers lost this game against Florida: a generally unthreatening offensive performance.
Shot Locations
Here again we can see the wide disparity in shot attempts, although something of note is that of the Rangers’ shots in the home plate area, a decent amount of them were blocked by Florida.
Individual Corsi
More of the same here – the wide disparity in shot attempts means every Ranger was positive in individual Corsi except Emerson Etem, who was dead even. On the other side of the coin is the entire Florida Panthers roster, with every player logging a negative Corsi differential.
Overall this was a tough loss for the Rangers but not one that fans should despair over. Despite the three Florida goals the Rangers played a decent game defensively and dominated in terms of puck possession, which is something they’ve struggled to do all season. The key to understanding this game is that the Rangers simply did not get enough high quality scoring chances, were largely contained by the Panthers defense, and had to deal with Roberto Luongo demonstrating why he’s one of the best goalies of his generation. These kinds of games are bound to happen sometimes even when the Rangers outshoot their opponent but the good news is that if they do so on a regular basis they’ll pick up some wins. They could do a lot worse than to play this way going down the road, but it of course goes without saying that we’d like them to do better, given the offensive firepower on the team.
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