rangers senators

The Rangers came into last night’s game looking to build off a win against Washington on Wednesday night. Instead, they got utterly dominated by an inferior team. The Rangers were crushed in the first period, surrendering 87% of the expected-goals in the period. It was a miracle that they came out of the period only down 2-1 thanks to a weird Jacob Trouba goal.

In a game that the Rangers were looking to grow on a win against a playoff team, they fell flat on their collective faces. The Blueshirts’ process is terrible, and once again couldn’t stop an opposing rush through the neutral zone. The Rangers are historically bad when it comes to the possession game and allowing high quality chances against. It’s their top-heavy offense that keeps them in games.

Senators 1, Rangers 0

https://twitter.com/ItsNotZaBINejad/status/1198039981333323777

Took me a while to find this video. This is a horrible shift by the Libor Hajek. He first chases the puck to the top of the circle, taking himself out of the play when the puck goes to the corner. Since it’s the left side, that’s supposed to be his man in the corner. He then puts himself in no-man’s land when the puck goes around the boards to Thomas Chabot, and then lazily skates over and provides a moving screen for Henrik Lundqvist. Awful.

Senators 2, Rangers 0

There really isn’t much else to break down here. That’s four guys on the same side of the ice on the penalty kill, and yet they couldn’t come away with the puck against three atteckers. Easy goal for the Sens powerplay.

Senators 2, Rangers 1

https://twitter.com/HeresYourReplay/status/1198047991057338368

I’m not really sure what happened here. Anders Nilsson just misplayed this, I guess?

Senators 3, Rangers 1

This is not a good look by Brady Skjei. He already knows Tony DeAngelo is there, since he almost skates into him. So he knows the slot man is covered. Pass goes to left side and Skjei ignores it completely. Then he steps up when Tyler Ennis is already in the high slot with prime chance.

Senators 4, Rangers 1

It’s a 5-on-3 goal, so there’s not much to break down here. Except maybe when your penalty kill is terrible, stop taking so many penalties, especially three in a two minute span.

Shot Heatmap

There’s not much to break down here either. It’s pretty self explanatory. The Rangers give up a ton of high quality chances, so much so that their high-end talent can’t recover.

Skater Results

It’s crowded at the bottom of the chart, with most Rangers on the bad side of things. But the very bottom with Hajek, Jacob Trouba, and Brendan Smith having particularly awful games. But hey, Chris Kreider had a good game.

Unfortunately this is what you expect from the Rangers nowadays. Yes, it’s a rebuild, but it shouldn’t be an excuse for poor process. The poor process exists on the ice, it exists in the locker room, it exists on the coaching staff. It’s everywhere. The rebuild shouldn’t be a crutch to lean on when the Blueshirts are this historically bad from a defensive standpoint. Time to own up.

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