These weren’t the Candy Canes, the sad sack Sabres or even the Islanders, the teams against whom the Rangers had constructed their three-game winning streak.
Instead at the Garden on Monday night, the opponents were the Ducks, the club holding the third-best record in the NHL — that incidentally had humiliated the Blueshirts 6-0 in Anaheim on Oct. 10 in a match the Rangers had not forgotten.
“We were definitely looking forward to playing them. The last game they embarrassed us a little bit,” Henrik Lundqvist said after the winning streak came to an end with a 2-1 defeat. “We know we can play with the best and I thought at times we outplayed and outworked them a little bit.
“We wanted to play strong and I thought we did for 55 minutes.”
Unfortunately for the Rangers, the regulation game is 60 minutes long. Anaheim took the initiative out of the gate, forced the Blueshirts into a plethora of bad decisions and capitalized on a pair of egregious giveaways on cross-ice passes from Derek Brassard and Brad Richards to gain a 2-0 lead at 9:09 of the opening period that the home team could not erase.
“It’s definitely a lesson for all of us that you have to be so careful with the puck, especially when you play top teams and their top lines,” Lundqvist said. “They’re so fast at turning mistakes into scoring chances and they’re good.
“That’s why they’re a top team. We have to be smart and hungry and play a desperate game from the get-go.”
The Rangers not only couldn’t erase the 2-0 deficit, they were unable to mount sustained zone time or generate sustained pressure until the final eight minutes of the match. Trailing 2-1 through two periods after Michael Del Zotto’s goal at 18:36 of the second, the Blueshirts had one shot on net through the first 11:40 of the third period before sending a dozen more on Frederik Anderson the rest of the way.
“Their defense stood up and made it tough for us to get pucks behind them, but we knew before the game that’s what they do,” said Ryan Callahan, who played 18:43 in his return to the lineup after missing seven games with a broken left thumb. “I thought we responded well to them taking the lead, but we certainly didn’t have the start we wanted.
“We have to be better than that at home.”
The Ducks were aggressive out of the gate and then clogged the neutral zone once they grabbed the two-goal edge. They gave the Rangers little time and space with which to make plays.
Anaheim’s defensive zone structure made it difficult for the Blueshirts to get shots through, notably so when the Rangers went on a power play with 5:17 remaining that became a two-man advantage for 10 seconds until all of it was nullified by a Benoit Pouliot offensive zone penalty.
“When we scored late in the second I thought we had started to take over, but we couldn’t build off that in the third the way we wanted to,” said Richards, who had five shots on 12 attempts, five of which were blocked that included a pair on the late power play. “We had some looks but couldn’t get enough through.”
“When we did, the goaltender made the saves.”
Callahan, who opened on the third line with Brian Boyle and Derick Brassard, replaced Pouliot through the second half of the game on the unit with Richards and Carl Hagelin. Pouliot, who had only three shifts in the second period, shuffled down to play with Boyle and Taylor Pyatt or Derek Dorsett in the third.
The 6-8-0 Rangers didn’t give up much after the first 10 minutes, but two were more than enough for the 12-3-1 Ducks.
“We were excited to play them, and obviously it was better than the last game, but the turnovers and the slow start cost us,” Marc Staal said. “They’re more balanced all the way through the lineup [than the Rangers’ last victims] and it was a lot harder game for us.”
Wednesday won’t be any easier. That’s when the Penguins come to the Garden. The joyride through the soft underbelly of the East has taken a detour.