AP Photo/Julie Jacobson

It is with a heavy heart that I inform you the New York Rangers are at it again. You can stop me if you’ve heard this one before but the Rangers, unable to connect on passes and playing without urgency for the vast majority of the game, relied on Henrik Lundqvist to make otherworldly saves and ultimately dropped the game despite their star goalie’s best efforts. It’s a tale as old as time, and frankly, I’m getting a little bit sick of it. I’m guessing you are too.

It all started in the first period, when the Rangers, despite keeping things relatively even in terms of shot attempts and even pulling ahead at one point in scoring chances, allowed the Leafs on more than one occasion to set up their cycle game in the Rangers’ zone. Against an average team this might not be that big of a problem – sure it’s a bad habit, but if you keep them to the outside and depend on your goaltender for sensational saves then it’s not so bad, right? Well, the Leafs have guys like Auston Matthews and William Nylander, and you’ll never guess who set up who to put the biscuit in the basket. Not an auspicious start to the evening.

Things weren’t much better in the second, although you can almost forgive the Rangers for the second goal of the game. Aside from the fact that the Rangers allowed Toronto to simply walk them all over the ice, the Rangers also had a great habit of taking tons of penalties throughout the game, and the second goal Toronto scored occurred on the man-advantage. It’s easy to give up powerplay goals though, and Hank, who was phenomenal last night (have I mentioned that?) was screened on the play. This one I’m not so mad about, but still, not great when you’re already down by a goal.

There was hope though, and it was sparked by our favorite Ivy Leaguer’s ability to get to the tough areas of the icy and jam a garbage goal home. While Jimmy Vesey isn’t my absolute favorite player (Merry Christmas, Pavel), even I can admit that he has a very particular kind of effectiveness – he goes where other guys won’t and gets shots off when other guys might look for the pass. This exceptional ability (he reminds me of Brandon Dubinsky or Ryan Callahan in the best ways) to push and push until something breaks through got the Rangers on the board and put together the necessary framework to start a comeback. The Rangers were still ceding tons of shot attempt throughout the second, and they did still give up a third goal to Auston Matthews, but from that point on they led in scoring chances, at least until the end of 40 minutes. Take a bow, Jimmy.

Unfortunately from that point on things kind of flatlined for the Rangers in terms of both getting the puck to the net and the actual quality of those shots. Still, the Rangers kept hope alive when the Leafs made a bad clearance from down low in their own zone and turned the puck over. A couple of excellent one touch passes kept the puck in the zone, with Chris Kreider bouncing the puck from along the half boards down below the goal line, where the newly-demoted Pavel Buchnevich showed great hustle and exceptional awareness when he beat the flat-footed Leafs defender to the puck and immediately sent a no-look pass through the legs of Roman Polak to the slot, where JT Miller picked it up, held it for a moment in order to get some control on the puck and pick his shot, and then rifled it past Anderson.

Things sure felt like they were preordained in favor of the Rangers at that point, when, as the jumbotron still had the camera on the celebrating bench and the announcer was calling out Miller’s name, Michael Grabner blew by a defender as he was entering the zone and sent an absolute laser beam into the back of the net. It was not to be however, due to the worst offsides review I’ve ever seen. It wasn’t that there wasn’t a player offsides – Kevin Hayes was clearly over the line.

What was so frustrating about this call was the expansive definition of “the play” being offsides. Michael Grabner was on one side of the ice when he entered the zone with that blinding speed, and Kevin Hayes was nowhere near him – he was on the opposite wing just kind of standing there (which is fine by the way, it’s how the Rangers often set up a zone entry). Now obviously there was the far out possibility that Grabner would send the puck all the way from one wing to the other, for a bizarre but clean break in (usually you don’t see cross-ice passes at the blueline). But any reasonable person would say that “the play” was on the opposite end of the ice, with uh, ya know, the puck and the puck carrier making the entry.

Again, Kevin Hayes was offsides, but he had absolutely nothing to do with what would have been the tying goal – “the play” was only offsides if you arbitrarily consider every player on ice, from the guy coming off the bench way behind everyone to the guys standing idly on the opposite wing just in case, to be a part of the “the play”. Common sense does not rule in today’s NHL however, and the review was quickly over; the Rangers had lost this one.

From there we saw something we had not seen from the Rangers pretty much all game: some urgency. The Rangers began to get actual substantive zone time, setting up their cycle game following a couple of speedy, well-executed zone entries. It wasn’t enough though, and as the clock wound down on regulation there was a bitter taste in the mouth of every denizen of the Blue Seats (and probably every section, but that’s not where I was sitting last night, so I can’t speak for them).

The Rangers had once again sat back throughout an entire game, playing with little sense of urgency or poise on the puck and instead opted to depend on their all-time great goalie to win the game for them. Henrik Lundqvist was visibly frustrated (at one point he threw his stick so hard and far that the linesman had to return it to him, only to get him a new one when the first one appeared to be cracked) and so were we. While this game was largely on the players, it’s hard not to see some fallacies in the way the coaches played this one.

First of all, just to get this out of the way, there was a too many men on the ice penalty during a crucial moment that stymied the Rangers attempt at a comeback. It’s the coaches job to manage guys’ ice time, including how many guys are getting ice time at once.

Beyond that though there seems to be a “win now” attitude already taking hold in December. Night in and night out we’ve seen the team rely on Henrik Lundqvists outlandish talent to keep them in it, with the team, from the top down, seemingly OK with that game plan. He’s being worked into the ground, on pace for more games than he’s played in at least the last few years if not longer; no goalie can play that many games with that level of effort and intensity and still be fresh for a long playoff run. Alain Vigneault simply does not have the answers anymore – despite the Rangers solid record over the past dozen or more games he seems to be aware that, ever since the Rangers kept his job alive with a win over Vegas on Halloween, he’s playing for his continued employment.

Even though he lets on very little, it can’t be too hard to figure out that, at least since they gave up around 70 shot attempts against Dallas, the Rangers’ game plan is unsustainable. After some embarrassing losses despite playoff-level goaltending performances, there’s no way that AV doesn’t have a sense of what’s going on. Given all of that, it’s not surprising that he’s in a “win now” state of mind, but what Jeff Gorton needs to recognize is that if you’re already at that point in December you’re too far gone. The Rangers do of course need to win as many games as possible, but if your sense of desperation has come on that strong at this point in the season it’s time to make a change. Whether that’s a big trade or firing the coach to send a message something’s got to give. Win or lose (and it’s going to be “lose” for a long time more than “win” if things don’t change) they simply can’t keep playing this way. Bah humbug!

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