It would be a mistake to declare that the sky is falling on top of the Rangers in the wake of yesterday afternoon’s 4-0 defeat to the 28th-overall Panthers.
But it would be an even greater blunder for coach Tom Renney to ignore the alarm bells that rang throughout the Garden over the match’s final 40 minutes.
For after a scoreless opening period in which the Blueshirts appeared energetic and in synch, they were disorganized and disconnected while being outworked decisively the rest of the way. They did little more than watch as Florida seized control by scoring three times in the second, the last two coming within a 12-second span late in the period.
“It happened so fast,” said Henrik Lundqvist, pulled after the Panthers built the lead to 3-0 at 16:13 of the second with a pair of uncontested goals.
“We really paid the price for not being prepared for a couple of minutes when they were coming so fast.
“There’s no excuse for us.”
The Rangers are 17-8-2. They had won three straight before yesterday’s banana-peel slip of an afternoon. Their plus-nine over .500 is fourth-best in the league. Perspective must be maintained.
At the same time, the Rangers have only one regulation victory in their last eight games, two in their last 11 and only three in their last 14. This does serve as some gauge of the team’s overall strength, as opposed to the measure of their specialists’ dominance of shootout competitions.
Even as the defense received insufficient help from the forwards – the previously sound Brandon Dubinsky-Markus Naslund-Nikolai Zherdev unit was dreadful in going minus-three – it was yet another difficult game for both Wade Redden and Michal Rozsival, a chronic problem that must be rectified.
Beyond that, the Rangers have played four matches with the line combinations that were reconstructed upon Scott Gomez’s return from his ankle injury. The Blueshirts have scored nine goals in the four games, one on the power play, one by Gomez into an empty net.
That empty-netter is the only goal the Gomez-Chris Drury-Ryan Callahan unit has scored. If Gomez’s talent as a playmaker is not exactly being wasted, it most certainly is not being maximized on this unit. With all due respect to Callahan’s relentless effort and Drury’s unquestionable work ethic, it’s a trio of smurfs without a legitimate finisher.
Down 3-0 after two, and 4-0 after the first minute of the third, Renney had the perfect opportunity to get a free look at what a Gomez-Zherdev combination might be able to produce. The coach could have moved Lauri Korpikoski, incongruous between Aaron Voros and Dan Fritsche, back to the wing while shifting Drury back to the middle.
But rather than reorganize with an eye to this week, in which the Rangers will step up in class with matches at home on Wednesday against Pittsburgh and on the road the next night in Montreal, the coach decided to stand pat. It was odd. So was his explanation when asked why.
“It’s a fair question,” Renney said. “Thought about it, but [instead] stayed with the guys who’d been doing it for us. It’s a fair question, but I don’t know that I have a good answer.”
That made the coach one of a large number of Rangers who didn’t have a good answer yesterday.
Panthers 4 Rangers 0