What’s the difference between the Rangers and the Atlanta Thrashers? Recently, not much.
Both teams have lost three of their past four games, although the Thrashers are coming off a win. Despite their best attempts to lose ground in the standings, the Rangers are still in second place in the Eastern Conference. The Thrashers are in second-to-last place.
When the squads meet tomorrow night in Atlanta, the Rangers will be reminded that there are teams that are worse off than they are, even if right now it doesn’t seem like it.
“It’s important. It gives us a sense of where we are and you need to know that before you know where you’re going,” coach Tom Renney said about the Rangers’ recent slate of games. “I think for us it’s a good acid test. It just illuminates more of what I think we already knew, but there’s nothing like experiencing it.”
As an encore to Thursday’s embarrassing 6-2 loss at Montreal, the Rangers were beaten 3-0 at home by the Flames Sunday night. After yesterday’s practice, goalie Henrik Lundqvist noted Sunday’s game “felt better than Montreal.” Those are strange sentiments from a team that started 10-2-1.
Despite what the standings say, Renney agreed that all losses aren’t equal.
“As much as we didn’t score goals [Sunday], we had chances, we had shots on goal,” Renney said. “We out-chanced a pretty good team. We had some defensive breakdowns that cost us the game in an otherwise decent game for us.”
The Rangers have been shut out in two of their past four games and have struggled mightily on the power play, but Renney says the keys to fixing their offensive woes are defense and effort.
“It’s amazing what kind of platform [defense] can serve to your offensive game,” Renney said. “We have to use quickness and a good second and third effort. In terms of trying to get some more scoring, we gotta fight [inside]. We’re not a really big team up front, so we gotta be quick [and] we gotta pounce.”
Markus Naslund’s answer was about chance, or rather, chances.
“Sometimes these things go in cycles,” Naslund said. “We’ve been getting some good opportunities. It’s just about getting the puck in the net now.”