Rangers Fall Again In Los Angeles

The New York Rangers lost their second straight contest in their three-game California road trip, falling 4-3 to the LA Kings. After an even first period, New York allowed a pair of tallies in the second and one in the third to take the loss. The Blueshirts posted 28 shots in the final two frames after notching only eight in the first, but were unable to beat Anton Forsberg, who replaced an injured Darcy Kuemper with 38 seconds in the initial stanza, more than once. New York closes the trip on Friday in San Jose 

Game recap;

Rangers lines vs. Los Angeles:

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

Gavrikov-Schneider
Soucy-Borgen
Robertson-Morrow

Quick
Martin

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

A few thoughts

1)  Quick 

rightfully feted by the LA faithful in his return to the left coast, Quick didn’t have his strongest game between the pipes. He certainly was not aided much by his defense, which has been the case a lot this year. Quick, whose response to the question if he wanted to stay and be part of the rebuild was a yes with no other information provided and a look of annoyance at the question, has lost 12 straight games. Whether he has a place on the team in the future remains to be seen, but his experience and mentorship remains beneficial. 

2) Defensive system

The move from a man-to-man to a zone scheme with players having responsibility for areas and clarity about their responsibilities was to strengthen a weakness from last year. That was the case earlier this season, even though Quick and Igor Shesterkin stood on their heads a lot.

The breakdown over the last two months is partially caused by chasing offense due to a lack of finishing and forgetting about defensive structure. But that is only part of it as poor management, which had lead to turnovers and players out of place in their own zone, causing additional goals against. Add in the injury to Adam Fox and others with several pair shuffles coupled with some blue liners scuffling overall, and you have a recipe for disaster again. 

3) Power play

when a team struggles to score, every failure on the man advantage is exacerbated, the last two games that has been glaringly so. New York tallied twice on the power play Monday but was unable to convert on a 5-on-3 l, but at least hit the post twice. Tuesday, down by a goal in the second period with the same situation, no markers in a 98-second two-man advantage. The end result is eight losses in eight games on the tail end of back-to-backs.