NHL

Rangers waste opportunities in loss to Kings

Maybe it was playing back-to-back while the Kings were rested and waiting in New York for the Rangers, or maybe it was simply a largely listless performance against a formidable foe that yields next to nothing, but the Blueshirts got nothing at the Garden Sunday night in losing 1-0.

“They didn’t give us much but I don’t think we were totally on our game, either,” Brad Richards said after his team was blanked by Ben Scrivens. “The thing is, it was still right there for us, we had opportunities.

“That’s the most frustrating part.”

The Rangers did get 37 shots on Scrivens, who blanked the Devils on Friday, has a shutout streak of 155:02 and has surrendered three goals in going 3-0 since taking over for the injured Jonathan Quick. Richards himself accounted for seven shots.

But the Blueshirts weren’t sharp at all, consistently failing to connect on passes as if imitating the early season Eli Manning and unable to create the type of pace on which they thrive.

Coach Alain Vigneault shuffled combinations the final two periods, benching Carl Hagelin for a seven-minute span in the second before dropping No. 62 off the Richard-Ryan Callahan line and onto the third unit in the third period, switching him with Derek Brassard.

Hagelin, who had been a force in the club’s 7-2 revival after coming off the long-term injury list after the first 10 games, was also dropped from the second power-play unit in the second period, replaced by Benoit Pouliot.

Vigneault, who said there was nothing physically wrong with the winger, did not elaborate on his decision to limit Hagelin’s time.

Meanwhile, the club’s decision-making coming off Saturday’s up-tempo 1-0 victory in Montreal was suspect, as well, notably Mats Zuccarello’s choice to eschew a shot on a short-handed three-on-one break early in the second period and instead attempt to thread a difficult feed through traffic to Derek Stepan.

“Some nights some of those decisions are not the right ones,” Vigneault said. “Tonight was one of those nights.”

Nothing came easy. The Rangers couldn’t create time or space, smothered much of the way by the big, strong and effective Kings. They couldn’t win faceoffs, losing 40-of-63 at the dots. They could not capitalize on the power play, failing on five advantages worth a sum of 9:10, including a stretch of 5:10 in the second that included a pair of five-on-three’s accounting for 50 seconds.

“You have to find a way to score on your five-on-threes,” Derek Stepan said. “I thought we had some looks and had some plays there, but we weren’t as sharp as we need to be.

“It comes down to execution.”

The Kings scored the game’s lone goal at 1:23 of the second when Tyler Toffoli’s drive from the top of the right circle deflected off defenseman Anton Stralman’s skate blade and slithered through Henrik Lundqvist.

“It’s frustrating,” said the King after losing to the Kings. “I thought we had enough chances to tie it up, but we didn’t have puck luck. They got a stupid goal on a bad deflection.

“We talked going into the game how it was going to be an ugly one, played really tight and how the small battles all over the ice would make the difference. We knew special teams would be a big part of this game and they were, but not in our favor.”

The Rangers, who have scored a sum of three goals in losing two of their last three, weren’t precise on their extended man-advantages that began at 9:44 of the second. They couldn’t quite set up, couldn’t quite pull the trigger; couldn’t quite apply meaningful pressure against the extremely aggressive Scrivens.

“Maybe we weren’t sharp, but it’s tough with the power play sometimes on home ice where maybe you try to do too much,” said Richards, who finished the night with 6:13 of power-play time. “We started to press a little bit.

“We did have a couple of chances and rebounds, but we definitely want to be bombing the puck more than that.”

The show did bomb on Broadway, but that’s not what Richards meant.