PHILADELPHIA — This time it was neither effort nor goaltending that sabotaged the Rangers. This time — well, for yet another time — it was lack of production that doomed the Blueshirts.
“We’re not doing enough to win a game, that’s what it comes down to,” Marc Staal said following the 2-1 defeat to the Flyers on Thursday night. “It was a better effort, but if you don’t get results, it becomes pretty frustrating.
“We have to find a way to get two points.”
The defeat dropped the Blueshirts to 2-6 with their ninth straight game on the road coming up Saturday night in Detroit. They have scored a total of 12 goals, including six at 5-on-5. Brad Richards, who got the team’s lone goal against the Flyers, has four of those six goals.
“We want to build on the effort level, but everybody’s frustrated,” said Richards, who scored on a sharp-angle shot late in the first to tie the match 1-1. “When you’re 2-6 it’s hard not to be frustrated.
“We’re not giving teams near as much as we were two weeks ago, but we have to find ways to score. When you get zero, two and one all the time, you’re not going to win games.”
The Rangers do have problems generating an attack, much less finishing, minus Rick Nash, Ryan Callahan and Carl Hagelin. Injuries are part of it, but the Blueshirts simply don’t have many weapons absent their three top wingers.
The Rangers did get the effort against the previously 1-7 Flyers, but could not finish around the net, though their zone time was markedly better than it had been in any of the first seven matches.
“Guys did a lot of the right things,” coach Alain Vigneault said. “We used our speed, we spent a lot of time in Philadelphia’s end, plus we got pucks and bodies to the front.
“We tried extremely hard. The execution was maybe a little bit off, but it was a better effort [than Saturday’s 4-0 defeat in New Jersey] in my estimation.”
Cam Talbot was solid in his NHL debut in facing 27 shots, yielding goals on a Matt Read first-period shorthanded breakaway and a Braydon Coburn third-period screen shot that broke a 1-1 deadlock at 3:33. The 26-year-old was sure in his movements; square to the shooter and aggressive in cutting down angles.
“I tried to settle myself down on the first faceoff,” Talbot said. “I tried to play the best I could positionally and I thought I did that for the most part.”
The Ryan McDonagh-Dan Girardi pair had its best night of the season. The Rangers did chase down pucks. Chris Kreider, who had an assist, was effective on the forecheck in his first game following his recall from the AHL. Brian Boyle and Taylor Pyatt crashed the net. So did J.T. Miller.
But none could score. Or, well, none were given credit for scoring, with Miller having the apparent 2-2 game-tying goal at 5:36 of the third wiped off the board by a video review reversal in Toronto.
Boyle’s shot from the right side had been poked by goaltender’s Steve Mason’s stick onto the right skate of the driving Miller. The winger tried to get is stick on the puck before it slid into the net. It was called a goal on the ice.
But not so fast. Despite the absence of both clear intent and a distinct kicking motion, the goal did not stand. It’s a 50-50 call 2-5 teams that don’t score, don’t get.
“I didn’t necessarily think I kicked it,” Miller said. “I tried to shoot it and it caught me off guard. They obviously saw something I didn’t.”
The Rangers played with moxie in a game in which temperatures ran high. When Derek Dorsett saw Zac Rinaldo target McDonagh in the neutral zone late in the first, the Rangers’ winger dropped the gloves with the Flyer henchman.
“I thought he went low for the knee and got the elbow out for the old chicken wing,” Dorsett said. “That’s why I went with him.”
The Rangers went at it all night. They did all sorts of things. But they scored only once. And they did not win. Again.