RALEIGH, N.C. — John Tortorella focused on deficient defensive work as the root cause of the Rangers’ 4-1 defeat last night to the Hurricanes, and the coach is correct, his team left too many seams and creases for its quick opponents to exploit.
But the Blueshirts were also undone by a rare off night by the Marc Staal-Dan Girardi partnership on the blue line independent of team issues with the puck. The failure of the Sean Avery-Artem Anisimov-Marian Gaborik unit to bring any facsimile of Wednesday’s smashing performance at the Garden against the Maple Leafs didn’t help much, either.
“We have to be better. Our line has to be better,” said Avery, denied at the doorstep by Cam Ward off an Anisimov centering feed at the 6:58 mark of the first with the Rangers down 1-0. “Right there, I need to bury that set-up by Artie.
“I don’t think we were bad as a line, but this was a big game for us and we didn’t take over at any point like we needed to. We had the puck in their end but didn’t generate enough. It wasn’t good enough.”
Gaborik, who has scored 11 of his 15 goals against the Islanders, Oilers and Maple Leafs, wasn’t a factor, marked closely throughout. Avery had a couple of chances. Anisimov was stopped on a semi-break early in a match that featured a combined 17 shots (10 for the Rangers) in the first 6:58 before it settled down.
The line was also on for Brandon Sutter’s goal off the rush early in the second that became a 2-on-1 and gave the Hurricanes a 3-0 lead after Claude LaRose got one around the net at 5:39 of the first and Jussi Jokinen scored off a power play tip at 14:43.
“I felt mentally it was going to be a tough game to come back when it was 2-0,” said Henrik Lundqvist, who was outstanding. “It was a big game, but it is what it is.
“We can’t sit here and feel sorry for ourselves losing guy after guy.”
The Rangers have vowed not to use the series of injuries that has turned the lineup into something resembling an exhibition game roster, as an excuse. They seemed to do that last night, however, blaming much of their misery on the recent call-ups’ unfamiliarity with the finer points of the system.
And while Tortorella made it clear that vested veterans were as every bit as much to blame as the new kids on the block, the coach talked about needing to teach people like Kris Newbury, Chad Kolarik (who supplanted Chris Drury on the Brian Boyle-Brandon Prust line as the game evolved) and Dale Weise on the finer points of Rangers’ defensive hockey.
Still, on a night when Carolina coach Paul Maurice used his last change to maximum advantage by keeping the Eric Staal-Sergei Samsonov-Erik Cole line away from the Rangers’ No. 1 defensive pair, Marc Staal and Girardi never seemed in synch with or without the puck.
“I just thought we were brutal defensively,” said Tortorella, chapped specifically over the odd-man rush on Sutter’s goal and a penalty-kill breakdown on Jokinen’s score. “We were sloppy, the whole group.
“We can’t run and gun, and we’re not going to. If we’re going to be competitive over the second half, we have to defend. It’s of the utmost importance.”
So is getting more out of the top defense pair and the top line.