The New York Rangers surrendered two power-play goals and lost to a divisional opponent for just a third time this season. Here is the locker room reaction.
The New York Rangers surrendered two power-play goals and lost to a divisional opponent for just a third time this season. Here is the locker room reaction.
The Rangers fell behind in the first period and never could recover after that against a notoriously relentless Hurricanes trap-style game.
Goals in the first and last minute of the first frame, a miscue between Igor Shesterkin and Braden Schneider, and a neutral zone wall battle won by Andrei Svechnikov to bury the backbreaker lead sank the Rangers.
"The first period you hate it because it's two nothing. Right away they score two powerplay goals when special teams have been good for us all year," Rangers head coach Peter Laviolette said after the loss,"...If I'm going to go after a period it's the third period. I hated it. They play a simple game they put the puck behind us and we got caught looking behind us and we got caught turning the puck over and chasing."
The team captain Jacob Trouba also stated, "A lot of it was self-inflicted, a lot of turnovers and not enough grind or real compete. It's what's going to happen in games like that, there's no easy divisional games and at home and there's no reason to not show up in that game."
"I thought when we got our one goal there was a little more momentum and jam in the building and we gave up one quick after that, there wasn't much pushback after that."
Former Carolina Hurricane Vincent Trocheck echoed what his coach said, "The third period we just got away from everything, we didn't play our style of hockey and got cute through the neutral zone. Their transition game is good and they took over in the third."
The Rangers top performing 2C addressed why this game escaped the team, as a number of the club losses have this season, "We don't have a lot of losses. I think in the third period tonight we just let off the gas and they took it to us, you can't do that against good teams. We are in the whole game in the first and second periods, if we score one or two of those powerplays it's a different ball game. You gotta stick with it for a full sixty."