Chris Kreider scored twice Sunday afternoon at the Verizon Center, but it wasn’t enough to secure a victory as the Rangers were beaten anyway by the Washington Capitals, 5-2. The loss ended the team’s Mothers’ Trip, as well as a three-games-in-four-nights stretch on the road against division rivals–the Islanders, Flyers and Capitals–in which New York went 1-2-0.
Backup goaltender Antti Raanta made his first start for the Rangers in exactly one month–his last start in Minnesota on December 17–and suffered the defeat as Henrik Lundqvist rested after starting 11 games in a row. Raanta finished with 19 saves on Sunday.
“They’re the best team in the NHL right now and if you get down a couple of goals, they’re so sound defensively, it’s tough to come back,” Rangers alternate captain Derek Stepan said of the first-overall Capitals. “They’re a good hockey team for sure, though I like our chances against any team in this league, but right now they have our number.”
Playing with growing confidence, Kreider scored the game’s first goal midway through the first period and then got the Rangers back into it with a clutch tally late in the second, his eighth and ninth goals of the season and second and third in the past two days following his second-period score in Philadelphia on Saturday afternoon.
As he did the day before, Kreider’s first goal Sunday came by going to the net, paying the price in front of the Capitals net. After a face off win by Stepan in the offensive zone, Kreider went straight to the top of the crease and put himself in a position to deflect Ryan McDonagh’s slap shot past Washington goaltender Braden Holtby at 10:17 of the first period giving the Rangers a 1-0 lead.
Considering the fact that the Capitals are an incredible 25-1-0 this season when scoring the game’s first goal, that early Kreider score was extremely important for the visitors.
However it did not mean the Rangers would escape the first period with the lead. Despite a solid defensive period, the Rangers surrendered the equalizer when Alex Ovechkin’s power play shot from the left circle snuck through Raanta’s pads at 18:01.
It was Ovechkin’s 27th goal of the season, and the fifth he has scored in four games against the Rangers so far in 2015-16. In 43 career games against the Blueshirts Ovechkin has now scored 27 goals.
Before the game Rangers head coach Alain Vigneault had pointed out how important it would be for his penalty killers to rise up to the challenge of facing Washington’s potent fourth-ranked power play. After failing on the PK late in the first, the Rangers surrendered another power play goal early in the second to fall behind 2-1.
This time Nicklas Backstrom made a simply perfect pass on to the stick of Marcus Johansson who was not tied up effectively enough in front of Raanta’s cage, and Johansson tipped his 12th goal of the season into the net at 7:18.
“That’s been the most frustrating thing, our penalty killing,” offered McDonagh. “That’s been a strong suit of ours since I can remember. For whatever reason we’re letting the opposition dictate the plays that are being made. We have to work on that because it’s changing the momentum of games.”
Sixty-two seconds later Justin Williams deflected a Taylor Chorney even strength shot past Raanta to put New York in a two-goal hole.
With the clock winding towards the second intermission Kreider came through again to pull the Rangers within a goal by scoring his second goal of the afternoon at the 17:28 mark of the period.
Rick Nash made the play happen by bulling his way with the puck from the right wing wall towards the Capitals net. Though Nash’s shot from the low slot was blocked, Kreider hopped on the loose disc and rifled it past Holtby to make the score 3-2.
“We were pretty positive in the room (during the second intermission) regardless of how that period went, it’s 3-2 on the road against this team, and we thought that if we continued to push, continued to play in our own zone, we’d find a way to get one more,” stated McDonagh. “It didn’t happen.”
After the next play stoppage, just 14 seconds after Kreider’s second goal, Holtby removed himself from the game, suffering from dehydration. Holtby, who was replaced between the pipes by Philipp Grubauer, allowed two goals on 22 shots Sunday afternoon.
The Rangers did not test Grubauer before the period ended, nor early in the third either, and that cot them when the Capitals took advantage of a New York turnover in its own end of the ice to take a 4-2 lead at 4:51.
J.T. Miller was the guilty party on this one, blindly throwing the puck from his own left wing wall into the center of the ice and back towards his own goal. The pass was picked off by the Caps, and Williams followed with his second goal of the game when he deflected an Evgeny Kuznetsov shot past Raanta.
“We got some pucks to the net, but we needed to get better at finding the open (shots),” Nash said of the 11 shots Grubauer faced.
Williams finished off his Hat Trick by scoring into an empty net with 1:51 remaining in regulation.
The Rangers played without defenseman Kevin Klein, who was unable to go after hurting his thumb in Saturday’s 3-2 win in Philadelphia. Dylan McIlrath replaced Klein and appeared in his 19th game of the season, pairing largely with Keith Yandle at even strength.
After a day off Monday the Rangers return home to host the Vancouver Canucks Tuesday at Madison Square Garden.
“We need more guys to step up and make a handful more plays from the goaltending to the defensive corps and the forwards,” said McDonagh. “We need everybody to contribute more because it’s a fine line right now with these games.”
Jim Cerny
BlueshirtsUnited.com
(Reprinted With Permission of New York Rangers)
