Rangers End Road Trip 0 For 3

The New York Rangers completed their three-game California road trip with their third straight loss Friday, falling 3-1 to the Sharks. New York, once again, fell behind 2-0 due to a pair of early goals and trailed by the final score after the first period. The Blueshirts played better thereafter but were unable to do much offensively. A home game against Boston on Monday is followed by an away-home, back-to-back against the Islanders.

Game recap:

Rangers lines vs. San Jose:

Miller-Zibanejad-Perreault
Panarin-Trocheck-Lafrenière
Cuylle-Laba-Othmann
Blidh-Carrick-Raddysh

Gavrikov-Schneider
Soucy-Borgen
Robertson-Morrow

Martin
Quick

Scratches: Rempe, Vaakanainen, Brodzinski
IR: Shesterkin (lower-body injury)
LTIR: Edström (lower-body injury), Sheary (lower-body injury), Fox (lower-body injury)

A few thoughts:

1) Another slow start – Peter Baugh in his game recap column for the Athletic, spelled out the difficulties New York has had this season early in games. “The Rangers have given up 14 goals in the first five minutes of games this season, per NHL Stats. That’s tied for third-worst in the league. In addition, New York has allowed seven goals in the opening five minutes this month, second only to Seattle. In the first period, the Rangers have the third-worst shot differential (-79) and seventh-worst goal differential (-8).”

The players and coach spoke about how devastating the slow starts have been. Yet, the same action is repeated over and over with no abatement. All of this is lip service until it changes. Be as annoyed and as angry as you want, until they stop the bleeding and reverse the trend, mans nothing. 
“Seems like that’s becoming a little bit of a theme lately,” Vincent Trocheck said. “We’ve gotta get away from it.”

“They come out flying,” Rangers captain J.T. Miller said. “They draw two penalties. They capitalize. The building was rocking. We just kind of beat ourselves.”

Added Mika Zibanejad: “There’s no avoiding the fact that the start kills us, really.”

“You can’t start a game like that and spot a team a couple of goals and then take seven penalties along the way and think you’re going to give yourself the best chance to win,” coach Mike Sullivan said, referencing the five additional minors New York took after Pavol Regenda’s goal. “It’s just not a recipe for success.”

“You don’t win like that,” Zibanejad added.

2) Spencer Martin started his third game in the last four. A change of the guard while Igor Shesterkin is sidelined looks to have happened. The driver for this change is that Jonathan Quick has lost 12 straight (0-10-2).

3) Vince Mercogliano had an excellent look at how New York ended up with another letter eight years after the first one. The column is not for the faint of heart, as reading it makes you really wonder how GM Chris Drury still has his job. 

4) Colin Stephenson, the Rangers’ beat writer from Newsday, took a look at the team with and without Adam Fox, irrespective of the power play. We all know how much they miss Fox on the power play. Everyone – save for the US Olympic Team – should be aware of how good Fox is on the defensive end. Here is evidence of this:

They’ve allowed 91 goals in the last 25 games (3.64 per game) and 81 in the 22 games Fox has missed (3.68). That’s more than a goal per game higher than what they allowed in their first 27 games of the season (2.63) with Fox in the lineup every night.In those first 27 games, they scored 72 goals, an average of 2.67, and in the 22 games Fox has missed, they scored 57, an average of 2.59. So they’ve scored almost the same average number of goals with Fox in or out of the lineup, but they’ve allowed a goal per game more with him out.

According to the analytics website Natural Stat Trick, in the 494 minutes, 22 seconds Gavrikov and Fox have played together at five-on-five, the Rangers have outscored their opponents 17-12, outshot them 208-199, had more shot attempts (520-416), created more scoring chances (240-160) and more high-danger chances (103-54), and had more expected goals (22.83 to 15.78).

In 396:27 with Gavrikov-Schneider on the ice at five-on-five, the Rangers have been outscored 25-11, outshot 191-148 and out-attempted 405-341, and the scoring chances have been at a 191-161 disadvantage. The high-danger chances are at 73-72. And the expected goals are 18.61 to 14.49 for the opponents.Schneider’s numbers away from Gavrikov have been more stable. When he has been with his other most frequent partners this season — Urho Vaakanainen, Carson Soucy and Matthew Robertson — the goals for/against have been 16-16.

His numbers next to Gavrikov, however, show that he’s clearly not Fox.