AGAIN, Rick Nash was one of the most formidable Rangers forwards on the ice. Again, Rick Nash did not score.
“I can’t be satisfied [with my game] when we’re losing,” said Nash, who had four shots to increase his playoff-leading total to 80 through 23 games but has somehow scored only three goals. “Chances aren’t good enough; they have to go in. I have to be able to help the team win.”
On this night at the Garden and in this downer of a Stanley Cup finals Game 3 at the Garden that was hardly worth the 20-year wait, No. 61 was not alone in his inability to beat Jonathan Quick. No Ranger scored in Monday’s 3-0 defeat to the Kings that mirrors the 3-0 L.A. lead approaching Wednesday’s Game 4, when the Cup will be in the house for the Kings’ taking.
That’s the Kings’ taking, plural, and not the King’s taking, singular.
There is no singular reason the Rangers find themselves in this hole, but suffice to say the Blueshirts did not play nearly as well in this one as they suggested when it was over. The Rangers did finish with a 32-15 advantage in shots that was 19-9 at even-strength, but generated only six shots over the first 28:13, by which time they trailed 2-0.
The Kings capitalized on the Rangers’ mistakes just as they did in the first two games in L.A., while the Blueshirts just could not make their opponents pay the price for their errors, not that there were all that many on the L.A. side in Game 3.
The killer on the New York side, of course, was John Moore’s dreadful rush-read as the clock ran down in the first period that left Jeff Carter with wide-open spaces in the slot. From there, Carter beat Henrik Lundqvist over his glove on a drive that changed directions when it ticked Dan Girardi’s skate as the star-crossed defenseman dived in an attempt to block the shot. There were seven-tenths of a second remaining in the period.
“They bury their chances and we don’t,” Nash said. “You have to be able to finish.”
It is axiomatic that defense wins championships, regardless of the sport. But teams like, say, the 2003 Devils don’t make it through the Stanley Cup playoffs anymore. You have to be able to score these days in the evolving NHL.
The Rangers have averaged 2.61 goals per in the tournament, eighth among the 16 qualifiers, fourth among teams that were able to win at least one round.
The Kings, meanwhile, the team that won the 2012 Cup as lockdown kings, are the highest-scoring club in the playoffs, averaging 3.5 goals per through 24 matches.
It is the Kings who have the tournament’s leading goal-scorer, a fellow by the name of Marian Gaborik, who returned to the Garden with 13 goals, including the third-period tying goal in L.A.’s 5-4 Game 2 victory.
It is the Kings who have been able to win four of the 11 games in which they’d surrendered three or more goals through the playoffs, while the Rangers are now 0-9 in games in which Lundqvist has allowed more than two goals.
Nash and Gaborik were not traded for one another, even though that became the net effect of the separate multi-player swaps eight months apart with the Blue Jackets, in which Nash came and Gaborik went.
The wingers were linemates for approximately a couple of dozen matches last season before Gaborik was sent to Columbus at the 2013 deadline for the package of Derick Brassard, John Moore and Derek Dorsett that helped restore the core depth that had been lost when Brandon Dubinsky and Artem Anisimov had gone to the Jackets for Nash the previous summer.
But the pair never developed chemistry. Gaborik, who had scored 40 or more goals in two of his first three seasons on Broadway, floundered.
The impending free-agent winger is enjoying a grand renaissance in these playoffs after years of being labeled too soft, and perhaps too detached to succeed in the postseason. That evaluation should sound familiar to all the Nash-bashers who make their home in Rangerstown and surrounding precincts.
Mats Zuccarello and Brassard had several chances around the net against Quick, who, well, moved too quickly for the Blueshirts. Zuccarello hit the post on a gimme in the first. But it was Nash who set a tone for the Rangers, lugging the puck up the ice, going wide and driving to the net in filling the textbook definition of what a power forward is supposed to look like in the NHL.
“He battled real hard like he’s done through the playoffs for us,” said coach Alain Vigneault, who was all but at a loss for public words after this third straight loss. “Doesn’t have a lot to show for it, but he’s competing hard.”
If the Rangers have a signature forward, it is Nash. Yet, No. 61 hasn’t been on the power play — 0-for-6 Wednesday, 1-for-14 in the finals and 2-for-16 in the last seven matches — since Chris Kreider returned from his broken hand for Game 4 of the Pittsburgh series. No. 61 didn’t get on the man-advantage unit in Game 3 until the score was already 3-0 late in the second, which was way too late.
Just as it has gotten very late so very early in these Cup finals for the Rangers.