MONTREAL — Unable to assert their will, unable to win, unable to score, the Rangers are on a treadmill to oblivion.
It was 3-0 against again last night, this time to the Canadiens, representing a bagel-bagel in Canada following Thursday’s defeat by that score in Ottawa, the scoreless streak at 127:47 and climbing.
If the Rangers were weak for the first 40 minutes against the Senators, they were weak for most of the final 40 minutes last night in losing for the seventh time in their past 10 games (3-6-1), hanging on by a thread to eighth place only by virtue of holding a game in hand on the ninth-place Islanders.
Same difference for a team that can’t put together 60 minutes in a profession where winning is the bottom line.
“I think it was quite evident the last game we played that we simply weren’t good enough, and while I don’t think that was the case in this one, we’re just not getting the job done and we don’t have any excuses for it,” Rick Nash said. “We’re not burying the handful of chances we’re getting. We’re a second too late.”
It is getting very late for the Rangers, who have 14 games remaining, half against the seven teams they trail in the conference and against whom they are 4-12-1. The third-seed Jets are at the Garden tomorrow night before a home-and-home against the Penguins that kicks off on Broadway on Wednesday.
“I think we were desperate with the way we played in this game, but we have to find the way to be more desperate and to be better,” said Nash, who has one shot in his last two games and has scored in just two of his last 11 matches. “We have to look at ourselves in the mirror and realize what’s at stake.”
This group’s legacy is at stake. This is a fragile team whose players and whose coach, John Tortorella, just don’t seem to have the answers necessary to correct the course mid-stream.
The Blueshirts were desperate for a fast start in this House of Horrors in which they have lost seven straight in regulation by a stupefying combined score of 25-3 and have gone 0-7-1 in the last eight here since a victory on March 17, 2009 in Tortorella’s 10th game behind the New York bench.
Instead, the Rangers couldn’t have fallen behind much faster, going down 1-0 at 0:47 when both Martin Biron and Steve Eminger blundered on Michael Ryder’s dump-in that caromed off the outside of the net, allowing No. 73 to retrieve the puck before whipping one home from the slot.
The Rangers did not fold there, however, and they played an imposing first period, outshooting the Habs 17-10 and out-attempting Montreal 29-14. But they came up empty, and in fact left the ice down 2-0 when Thomas Plekanec buried a two-on-one at 18:11 following a Rangers power play on which Marian Gaborik — who opened on the fourth line but moved into a top six spot after the second rotation — was denied on a breakaway.
“We’re not executing,” Ryan McDonagh said. “We didn’t bury what could have been a huge goal, we didn’t execute on a two-on-one, we didn’t execute in clearing the front of our net.”
Mats Zuccarello played with pep but couldn’t create. No one created enough around the net to pierce Carey Price, who has somehow shut out the Blueshirts four straight times in Montreal. The Canadiens all but toyed with the Rangers the final 30 minutes.
So now the Rangers come home with 14 games to go, a playoff berth in serious jeopardy and oblivion right around the corner.