Sure, there were excuses to be found without looking very hard.
The officiating. Bad bounces. A hot opposing goalie. Injuries.
Yet the biggest reason the Rangers opened their home schedule with a disheartening 2-0 loss to the Canadiens Monday night at the revamped Garden came from the players who did dress, the players who somehow came into this new palace of an arena after a grueling season-opening nine-game road trip and laid an egg.
“It just wasn’t enough of the things we were doing well,” said Brian Boyle, who finished the game with a team-high four shots but took a roughing call late in the second period that led to the Canadiens breaking the scoreless tie with a power-play tally from Tomas Plekanec.
“Like the forecheck,” Boyle said, “the battles, getting to the front of the net and getting two and three chances instead of one and done.”
Those good things were not done very often in the team’s opening road trip, a trip that managed to come to a happy end Saturday in Detroit, when they beat the Red Wings, 3-2, in overtime. It seemed like that was going to enable the Blueshirts (3-7-0) to come back to the Garden with some energy and enliven a sold-out crowd with high expectations.
Even the return of franchise goalie Henrik Lundqvist, who missed the previous two games with an undisclosed injury, could not buoy the storm. Lundqvist made 25 saves, and did everything in his power to keep his team in it.
“We just hoped for an early goal for us to get the energy and confidence and get the building going,” Lundqvist said. “It was a disappointing loss, but it was great to be back.”
Instead, what happened was the Canadiens (7-5-0) dictated the pace of play — meaning, in their usual routine under coach Michel Therrien, they slowed the pace to a halt, checking so tightly they choked the life out of the building before it could even let go of its first real breath.
It also didn’t help that Montreal backup Peter Budaj denied all 27 shots he faced and thwarted the Rangers the few times they did have good scoring chances.
“We were expecting a tight-checking game and that’s what we got,” said coach Alain Vigneault, whose crisis on Broadway will become even more dire if he can’t get his players up for Tuesday night’s game against the Islanders at the Coliseum. “They were able to get one on their power play, and our power play didn’t manage to get the job done.”
The Canadiens got just one goal on the power play — just one on the six chances and 8:59 of man-advantage time the Rangers gave them. Although many disputed the Boyle call, even more disputed an extremely touchy whistle on Chris Kreider early in the third period, negating the Blueshirts’ own power play as well as a clear breakaway for Brad Richards.
“I guess when they’re backing up, it’s their ice,” Kreider said about the explanation he got from the refs on a play in which he barely touched Raphael Diaz, who then collided with Josh Gorges, and both Montreal penalty killers fell to the ice in a heap. “I need to make some effort to get out the way. I guess stopping wasn’t enough.”
Just over a minute into the game, it was Kreider who hit the post on a wide-open shot from the slot, continuing his good play for the third straight game since being called up from AHL Hartford — but the close call exemplified the team’s inability to just get the puck in the net.
“We are generating a sufficient amount of chances,” Vigneault said. “Right now, we are obviously having a tough time finding the back of the net.”