SCOTTIE FREE: The Panthers’ Scottie Upshall (right) celebrates his second-period goal that helped lead Florida to a 3-1 victory over the Rangers — who started slow and never really recovered — last night at the Garden (
)
Let’s start at the beginning, which, as has become a disheartening and inexplicable pattern, the Rangers did not do in last night’s match at the Garden against the 30th-overall Panthers.
The Blueshirts failed to assert themselves, failed to establish a tone, failed to inform the clawless Puddy Tats that they would be in for a hard day’s night.
“Every other team comes out hard at us in the first five or 10 minutes where we kind of feel like we’re weathering the storm, so I don’t know why we haven’t been able to throw everything we have at them the first few shifts and create momentum that way,” Dan Girardi said after the Blueshirts’ 3-1 defeat.
“Our coaches gave us a pretty good pregame report, they told us Florida would come hard the first five or 10 minutes, so we knew that,” the defenseman said. “No disrespect to the Panthers, but we kind of let them off the hook by playing the way we did at the start.”
The Rangers finally did get it going after falling behind 1-0 at 8:22 of the first on Brian Campbell’s power-play goal and they kept coming after Scottie Upshall scored at 4:28 of the second. But despite racking up a season-high 46 shots against Jacob Markstrom and tying a season-best 77 attempts, this was one the Rangers never quite got hold of, one the Rangers never quite deserved to win.
Make no mistake. This was a giant step backward for the team that once again is in ninth place after the two small steps forward with back-to-back victories over Carolina and in New Jersey on Monday and Tuesday.
“I don’t know,” Girardi said. “We’ve got to try and figure this out.”
Henrik Lundqvist suggested specialty teams would be a pretty good place to start when searching for reasons why the 15-13-2 Blueshirts have been unable to get on a roll.
“The specialty teams are going to be critical coming down the stretch,” said the King. “The penalty-killing — that starts with me — almost has to be 100-percent, because [when you don’t score], you don’t have the luxury of [allowing] a lot of goals.”
The Rangers failed on all three power plays against the team with the league’s poorest penalty-kill record, including one in the game’s final minute on which the Panthers scored an empty-netter to clinch it. They allowed one power-play goal against while short twice.
Over their last six games, the Rangers are 0-for-11 on the power play while going 4-for-19 on the penalty kill, with both one shorthanded goal scored and one allowed. The Rangers have scored a sum of seven goals in going 2-4 in those six matches, getting more than one only in Tuesday’s 3-2 victory over the Devils.
“We did a lot of good things, but it’s getting old,” Lundqvist said. “We just have to put the puck in the net; that’s how you win games.”
Marian Gaborik put the puck in the net at 16:12 of the third for his first goal in eight games, second in 17 and third in his last 25. Indeed, Gaborik, who had eight shots last night, had somehow scored on just one of his last 53 shots before beating Markstrom on a backhand from close range on a sprint to the net.
But that was the sum of the offense for the Rangers, who spent a lot of time in the Florida zone, but never wore down the Panthers. But then, the Blueshirts aren’t that kind of team this time around.
“The teams that are consistent aren’t always great but they find ways to win,” Lundqvist said. “That’s something we’re lacking this year.”
That, and beginning at the start.