Can I just say that coaches around the NHL have a propensity for pulling their goaltender for the extra attacker way too early way too much of the time? It has become common practice.
Take Thursday night in Brooklyn, for example, when Henrik Lundqvist dutifully left his net to go to the bench with about 80 seconds remaining and the Rangers down by one as Jimmy Vesey moved through the neutral zone with the puck on his stick.
Vesey, who was the Rangers’ best player in this one if Rick Nash was not, sent the puck directly on net instead of putting it into a corner or rimming it around the boards. Thus it was no trouble for Thomas Greiss to move it out of harm’s way.
Seconds later, Andrew Ladd came away with the puck at the half-boards, skated it out and bull’s-eyed into the empty net while Ryan McDonagh, perhaps unaware Lundqvist was on the bench, did not move over to cut him off.
And so for all intents and purposes did the latest Rangers defeat in the Battle for New York end, this by a 4-2 score. You can put this in the books: the Blueshirts are 0-3-1 in two years at Barclays, 1-5-1 in their last seven overall and 3-8-1 in the past four years against an Islanders squad they’re well on their way to finishing ahead of in the standings for the 12th straight season.
“Of course we want to win here. We wanted to get a win in this building,” Lundqvist said. “When you win a game like this you get an extra good feeling, but if you lose, you don’t make it a big deal. You know what I mean?”
These passion plays always seem to mean more to the Islanders, maybe because they generally have been in a more tenuous and desperate position than the Rangers. Still, though, this consistent storyline doesn’t exactly flatter the Blueshirts, who are 19-6 away from the Garden everywhere except in Brooklyn, where they’re 0-2.
“It’s not an easy building for us to play, kind of like it was in Montreal a few years ago,” said Chris Kreider, who didn’t have much of an impact at all, skating with linemates Mika Zibanejad and Mats Zuccarello. “It all comes down to execution. We worked hard, but we weren’t able to make plays.”
The Rangers had won six straight and nine of their past 11 coming in, so there’s no need to hold a requiem. Still, the Blueshirts were outworked for stretches at a time and were caught watching and standing around far too often, critically so on the Nikolay Kulemin 3-1 shorthanded goal at 3:03 of the third on which four men stood transfixed around the Islanders winger as he shoveled it from the doorstep.
The Nash-Vesey-Derek Stepan line was the only unit that clicked for the Rangers. J.T. Miller had a tough night with Kevin Hayes and Michael Grabner and the fourth line was overmatched in this one, on for the Anders Lee 1-1 tying goal at 2:43 of the second while caught in an unfortunate matchup against the John Tavares line. Marc Staal fought it with and without the puck all night long.
But it was a particularly tough night for Zibanejad, who just couldn’t get anything going offensively and was one of the guilty parties on Kulemin’s shortie. Indeed, it has been a rough stretch for No. 93, who has six points in 13 games since returning Jan. 17 from the broken fibula that sidelined him for nearly two months, with both goals coming in his first one back.
“This is something I have to fight through mentally; it’s not physical,” Zibanejad told The Post. “It’s easy to point back to the injury, but I am not going to use that as an excuse. I’m expected to provide offense and that’s what I expect from myself, too.
“There are times when I have a play or a shot and I hesitate a half-second or different situations where I’m not where I should be. I know that. It’s frustrating for me.
“My foot is OK. I know that even if sometimes I can feel it. That’s just mental. I’m not looking for any excuses. I have to fight through this and get back to the level where I was before.”
The Rangers go at it again on Sunday against Caps. They will be in Manhattan, a far friendlier borough than the one in which they lost (again) on Thursday.
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