It’s only natural this becomes a moment of reflection, one when the Rangers are forced to stand in contrast with what was, and what might be.
Because the way they lost Thursday night at the Garden, a 4-2 defeat at the hands of the Blue Jackets, was not only to a team full of ex-Rangers, but it was also in the same vein with which they have floundered away the first 33 games of this season.
At 15-17-1, the Blueshirts have almost no discernible identity, and now that they’ve opened this season-high nine-game homestand by going 0-3-1, that lack of focus is starting to place them in a rather deep hole.
“You get in a jam, it’s tough,” Brad Richards said. “It seems like everything is going the wrong way, but you have to trust and believe that we’ll have our time.”
New coach Alain Vigneault has now had ample time to inspect his personnel in depth, and has begun to pull back on his offensive-minded approach, the same philosophy that made him so attractive as a contrasting replacement to John Tortorella. Yet now with the emphasis on being sound defensively first and creating offense off of that — gee, where have you heard that one before? — it sure seems as if the problem is his team’s ability to heed the message.
“We tried to have a good start, but we got a little too excited in jumping up and trying to create some odd-man rushes,” said defenseman Dan Girardi, whose team was down 3-0 within the opening 11:10. “We’re trying to do the right thing, but the way things are going right now, we have to be smart in our decisions.”
Smart translates into sitting back more, something that wasn’t supposed to happen under Vigneault, nor with the supposed firepower up front with the likes of Rick Nash and — wait, who else was supposed to lead this goal-scoring powerhouse?
Because that was what the Rangers were missing from the team that two years ago went to the Eastern Conference finals, right? That is why general manager Glen Sather traded away Brandon Dubinsky and Artem Anisimov — among other assets — to Columbus for Nash two summers ago, so they finally had that elite talent to put them over the edge? And that is why he fired Tortorella and hired Vigneault in June, no?
“We just have to find that happy medium between being too anxious to get something going,” Girardi said. “Be smart and things will come.”
Smart was out of the building and somewhere far away in the first period, when the Blue Jackets (14-15-3) had Matt Calvert, Anisimov and David Savard all score to rub the Rangers’ faces in almost every mistake they made. It also caused Vigneault to insert backup goalie Cam Talbot into the game and yank franchise netminder Henrik Lundqvist, his fifth start in a row coming as a glaring reminder he is currently more average than at any time in his illustrious seven-year career.
“It’s tough to explain,” Vigneault said about the start of the game, his team now 1-15-0 when the other team scores first. “When you have a challenge generating some offense and when you aren’t scoring any goals, that’s why you have a record like that.”
The Rangers are at least not a team that quits, and they pushed back with a goal at the end of the first period from Dominic Moore, his first of the season, and then another by Girardi, his second, with 11:07 gone by in the third to cut the lead to 3-2.
But with 1:32 remaining, Ryan Johansen beat Talbot on an easy shot from the perimeter, and that sealed it.
“Being home for nine in a row, that was a chance for us to really propel ourselves up in the standings,” said Girardi, his team now sixth in the putrid Metro division. “We have to figure out how to salvage the rest of the homestand.”