This has been a long time coming, at least for the last two weeks in which the Rangers have split six games and been deleterious in one-sided defeats against Florida, Washington and now Buffalo, after Thursday’s Sabres’ 6-1 rout of the Blueshirts at the Garden.
This is what the Rangers are at the moment when Igor Shesterkin, struck down by mortality in allowing five goals on 12 shots before being pulled at 13:51 of the second period, is not a miracle worker.
“It’s been building toward this, definitely,” Chris Kreider told The Post after he and his teammates rolled out passionless and disconnected play. “I don’t think our process has been great. We haven’t been good defensively and we haven’t been good at the things that win hockey games.
“We’ve just had great goaltending and timely scoring. But we’ve been kind of fooling ourselves because we’ve been winning hockey games, but the reason we’ve been winning is that our goaltender has been playing out of his mind.”
It is somewhat ironic, don’t you think, that the bottom fell out on a night on which the Blueshirts were not under siege in their own end and did not allow a plethora of glorious chances from within 5 feet of the net. Indeed, Buffalo was credited with only 12 scoring chances — four defined as high danger — through the second period that ended 5-0.
Instead, the Rangers committed glaring and noisy mistakes, lost essentially every battle in which they chose to engage, and were impotent offensively. How’s this? The Blueshirts cobbled together only five attempts at five-on-five through the first period.
“I think this was a little bit different,” head coach Peter Laviolette said. “I don’t think we gave up an onslaught, but I personally don’t like the effort that we had to attack the game offensively.
“We needed to control the puck more; to generate more in the offensive zone; to be in the offensive zone more than we did; and to put their goalie under siege.”
That’s more than fair. The Rangers did not have legitimate puck possession in the offensive zone until the six-minute mark of the first period. They were credited by Natural Stat Trick with eight scoring chances through the first two periods before the Sabres sat back in the third and allowed the Blueshirts to travel 200 feet.
But the defensive breakdowns in front of Shesterkin were of the five-alarm variety. Jacob Trouba and K’Andre Miller were delinquent, both individually and as a pair, with decisions and one-on-ones. Ryan Lindgren, who has not been close to himself since returning from jaw surgery in the sixth game of the season, suffered mightily playing beside Adam Fox.
Look, everyone respects Lindgren. But it appears as if the Blueshirts rushed No. 55 not only back into the lineup before he was ready — the John Glenn-type bubble helmet he has been wearing obviously is an encumbrance — but Laviolette rushed him back into the top four for no apparent reason after the club went with Miller-Fox and Braden Schneider-Trouba tandems for the first seven games that seemed to be meshing.
Shesterkin’s save percentage dropped 14 points from .933 to .919 in this one. This should remind everyone that small sample sizes represent a snapshot and not necessarily the whole movie.
But still. The Miller-Fox pair had a 61.13 Corsi rating, was on for seven goals for and five against with an expected goal rate of 66.80. The Schneider-Trouba tandem had a 51.13 Corsi, was on for seven goals for and three against with a 57.86 xGF.
That serves as a major contrast to Miller-Trouba, who have a 38.46 Corsi, has been on for no goals scored and four against with a 28.09 xGF, and to Lindgren-Fox, who have a 51.56 Corsi but have been on for one for and three against with a 40.47 xGF.
Plus, reinserting Lindgren into the top four created a chain reaction in which Schneider dropped down to the third pair with either Zac Jones or Victor Mancini — remember him? — a mandatory scratch.
Still, maybe that’s seeing the forest for the trees. There’s much more to it over the last six games in which the Blueshirts have been outscored 14-8 at five-on-five after owning a 20-7 edge over the first half dozen contests.
“It’s obviously very disappointing embarrassing ourselves like this at home,” Kreider said. “The defensive stuff, it’s a choice, it’s commitment, it’s communication and it is energy. It’s getting on the same page and buying in as a group.”
Again, this one has been a long time coming. The Rangers have been notoriously deficient in details. They’ve gotten by on talent and by hitching a ride on Shesterkin’s cape. Teams that try to get by on talent are never the last team standing. You’d think this group would know this by now.
“It’s a wake-up call, that’s what it is,” Kreider said. “But it can also be a turning point.
“It has to be a turning point for us.”
