After an embarrassing 2-1 Garden loss to the Islanders in which his Rangers sleepwalked through the first 20 minutes, John Tortorella was fuming.
“It’s simply unacceptable how we started that game,” the livid Rangers coach said before eventually storming out of his profanity-laced postgame press conference. “I wish I could give you a [bleeping] explanation about it. I can’t.”
If ever a team should have been ready to play, it should have been the Rangers. They didn’t have a win in their previous four games, had just one in their last seven and had a young, struggling Isles team that had just been embarrassed by the Panthers coming in.
But the Rangers opened by getting outshot 10-3 in the first and were constantly a step behind the quicker, more energetic Isles, who had dropped four of five before last night.
Tortorella also threatened changes before the teams face off again tonight at the Coliseum.
“There has to be something done,” Tortorella said of his team, which has scored two or fewer goals in its last seven. “And we’ll see along the way here before [tonight’s] game what we go with.”
It’s hard to imagine any simple maneuvers to cure what ails the Rangers, while the Isles dictated the pace and got superb goaltending from Dwayne Roloson — along with a fluky goal in the first from Jon Sim and a second goal from Blake Comeau, who pounced on a rebound from a hard Matt Moulson shot.
Enver Lisin made it interesting, cleaning up a Dan Girardi shot 19:05 into the third and then the Isles survived a brief flurry in the final seconds.
But once again, it wasn’t enough. “We just come up short every time,” said Ranger goalie Henrik Lundqvist, who made 26 saves. “It’s very disappointing.”
The Isles, however, looked like a different team than the one that suffered a 7-1 defeat at home to Florida just two days prior.
“We bounced back really well,” Sim said. “We had urgency the whole game.”
Which is something the Rangers noticed. “They forechecked us hard and were in our face,” Marc Staal said. “We didn’t respond.”