The barrage was a mirage.
Rangers coach John Tortorella, needing hands quick as Erik Christensen’s to win a shell game that inevitably turns fraudulent in the absence of a pea, last week moved Sean Avery and Christensen up with Marian Gaborik.
If that weren’t a real first line, it sure fooled the Islanders. Gaborik scored three times, Christensen picked a top corner from a tough angle and Avery cycled better than Lance Armstrong as skill won a game for the Rangers for a change, 6-5.
If it were too soon to call this the Stanley-Cup-contending No. 1 unit the Rangers haven’t had since Mark Messier and Adam Graves, or even a scary No. 1 line they haven’t had since Michael Nylander set up Jaromir Jagr, it at least looked like three guys who could stay hot enough to sustain a good Rangers run.
Gaborik, Christensen and Avery haven’t scored since, not in the 2-0 win over the Islanders on Friday night when it wasn’t necessary and not in last night’s 3-1 loss to the Senators, when it was.
The Rangers, coming out flatter than a Wade Redden EKG, lost it early and then lost it late when their first line couldn’t keep up with Chris Kelly with 2:44 to go. But they also lost because their No. 1 scoring unit was lost for most of the night.
Gaborik got taken down, enabling Kelly to score shorthanded to open the scoring and may have been tripped on a second-period breakaway. But he and his linemates had one shot on goal.
Hard to win like that, almost as hard as winning 2-1 every night. Somebody has to score, and if, like last night, it’s Brandon Prust and only Brandon Prust, the Rangers will be straining to make the playoffs in Game 80.
“We got our legs under us, got some good looks on the power play,” said Tortorella. “But you could just sense when we didn’t score that second goal, something was going to happen.”
He didn’t mean something good, not when the grind had showed up late and the latest version of a first line, centered by a career heartbreaker like Christensen, didn’t show up at all.
“We have to do more simple things,” said Christensen. “In that first period we couldn’t even get out of our own end.”
Eventually they made it to the other end, to no avail.
“Awful play by Gabby passing the puck to Step [on the short-handed goal],” said Tortorella. “They had some good shifts, but with two minutes left they have to defend.
“I didn’t have that line against [Daniel] Alfredsson and [Jason] Spezza, it was against [Jarkko] Ruutu, Kelly and [Chris] Neil. They need to defend that play.”
Failing that, they need to make the play that cancels out the bad play, but you don’t blame that on the foot soldier [Avery] or totally finger a premier finisher [Gaborik] if he’s not getting the puck in scoring position.
So round up the usual suspects, the Rangers in the middle.
“I don’t think there is one head-over-shoulders over the others,” Tortorella said before the game. “But Erik has contributed the last few games, Step, a young guy, has 16 points.
“Artie [Anisimov] contributed early, struggled a little bit but played very well [Friday] night. [Brian] Boyle has 11 goals.
“So you do it by committee. It’s our team.”
For better, generally, through a 16-12-1 start. Last night for worse.