Winslow Townson-Imagn ImagesThe New York Rangers allowed a season-high seven goals in their 10-2 loss to the Boston Bruins on Satrday afternoon, marking the lowest point of the season.
“I don't have words. I don't have words,” Mike Sullivan said after the team’s astonishing loss.
Less than two minutes into the contest, the Rangers actually scored the first goal of the game off a feed from Artemi Panarin to Mika Zibanejad, but it was all downhill from there.
The Bruins managed to score six unanswered goals in a stretch where the Blueshirts unraveled defensively.
Between their struggles to break out of their own zone, careless turnovers, and vulnerability to being outskated and losing their defensive assignments, the Rangers gave up numerous high-quality scoring chances, many of which translated into goals.
There was a lack of intensity and urgency shown by the Rangers, as they allowed Boston to control every aspect of the game with little pushback to show for it.
“That’s as bad as it gets,” J.T. Miller said of the Rangers’ performance. “The only thing that really matters now is this should sting, like this should suck, like this should make you want to puke… They were more assertive, faster, more physical. They probably felt like they had total control, and they did for a lot of it.”
While the rest of the team clearly left Jonathan Quick out to dry for many of Boston’s goals, it was not the veteran goalie’s finest performance. He gave up six goals on 20 shots and was pulled for Spencer Martin in the second period.
Despite thriving in a backup position under Igor Shesterkin, Quick’s ability to put a team on his back in the starting-goaltending role is simply not there anymore at 39 years old, and Shesterkin’s absence due to a lower-body injury is posing to be a major problem for New York.
After Friday’s practice, Sullivan emphasized that the team has been playing with more structure when outlining how he feels the Rangers’ culture has begun to shift.
However, there was no structure to their game on Saturday afternoon, only further proving that the Rangers are still very far from Sullivan’s ultimate vision of where he wants to take the organization, let alone a playoff-caliber team.
Some of the strides the Rangers made from a defensive standpoint over the course of the season have slipped away as of late, and came crashing down in Boston.
“A lot of it boils down to details and commitment. I thought for a long stretch of the season, I thought we were pretty stingy defensively, and certainly all the numbers suggested that I think we've gotten away from it a little bit lately,” Sullivan said. “We've got to get back to being a stingier team defensively, and we can create offense off of it.”
At this point in time, the Rangers find themselves five points out of the second wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference, while every team above them in the standings has games in hand on the Blueshirts.
Their playoff hopes are dwindling and with the Olympic break and trade deadline quickly approaching, the clock is ticking on Rangers president and general manager Chris Drury in terms of determining the direction of the franchise.
That direction could include trading some of the team’s veteran players if this tailspin continues to ensue.
“We're at where we’re at because of all of us, and we've got to figure out the solutions to try to get back on the right track and give ourselves a chance,” Sullivan said.
The word used after the game was a “reset” as the Rangers have officially reached rock bottom after this performance and want to use it as fuel to turn the page on what has been a frustrating and inconsistent season.
“I don't know if forgetting about it is the answer,” Vincent Trocheck said. “I feel like we should be embarrassed right now, and I think we are. I don’t think the solution is forgetting about it. I think it’s learning from it. Hopefully we can take this game and the feeling we have in our stomachs right now and want to never have that again.”
The Rangers will be back in action on Monday night against the Seattle Kraken.