Rangers Fall To Oilers 2-0 At The Garden | New York Rangers

Rangers Fall To Oilers 2-0 At The Garden | New York Rangers

And on a night where a sellout crowd at Madison Square Garden witness history. Never before had a team lost their first three games at home in a season by shut out until now. Rangers fall two nothing to the Edmonton Oilers here at the Garden. Hi everyone. Welcome to the Mercedes-Benz Rangers postgame show. John Geon from my spot between the benches. In our studio we have Henrik Lungquist and Steve Alicette. And boys, where to begin in this one? Now, we’ve seen, let’s see what the total is. 90 shots on goal inside this building on this ice surface this season. Zero goals against Archer Sheil’s, Charlie Lingren, and tonight Steuart Skinner. I mean, it’s it’s hard to believe when you watch the last two games the fact that they haven’t scored. I I feel for the players. I really do. I I felt like especially tonight, they created enough chances to score three, maybe four goals. They had wide open nets. They had opportunities in the slot. Um it just didn’t bounce their way. It’s so important now to stay confident here. Obviously, you you need wins. Yes, they’re playing the right way, though. They really do. Defensively, you can’t ask for much more. We hardly notice McDavid or Dryidle. They had a few looks, but overall, they defended so well and created again enough chances to win this hockey game. So, it’s not a great feeling in that room for sure, but you got to give them a lot of credit the way they battled and and and stayed with it throughout 60 minutes. Yeah. Look, I think that John, there were several chances the Rangers had from below the goal line into the slot area with clean looks. One that Mika had in the third period that he had Skinner beat, it just missed the net. Uh I think of the second period when Carrick hits the crossbar, the net drives were there. It’s not like they’re not in attacking the interior. This chance right here is the one that I saw at least five to six times tonight. So, when you try and boil it down, are you playing hockey the right way? You are. Maybe the good and bad news is is the fourth line’s been terrific, but they’re also the best line, the most effective line that had the most scoring chances. I thought overall Paneran had a quiet night. Lafrenir had a quiet night. Sabanagad started off strong, but there weren’t a lot of positives from the star players. Uh, more positives from the fourth line. The positives don’t end offensively, though. Defensively, they’re shutting the rush game completely down. They’ve been terrific this year at minimizing high danger chances against off the rush. Uh, there’s a lot of positives defensively in the Dzone structurally. You have to try and lean on that. It’s a long season and you’re okay saying it’s a long season when you’re playing well and losing. It’s not okay when you’re playing poorly because of effort and execution and and those types of things. It’s not the scenario tonight. So many opportunities from so many Rangers to put one behind Steuart Skinner who gets the eighth shut out of his career. Let’s begin the reaction inside the Rangers dressing room. Let’s hear from the captain JT Miller. Well, let’s just first of all, let’s not make this bigger than it is. It’s game five. a lot to like about our game. It’s a unique situation, but let let’s not blow this out of proportion here. One of the things uh that stands out to you is you don’t commit a penalty tonight. You get 30 shots on net. There’s some things there that obviously should translate into Yeah, there’s a lot of good um we’re getting a lot of chances. Uh this is a unique start to a season in a sense of uh couple games where we feel like we’ve really thrown a lot at the other team and we’re not getting rewarded. So, I think it’s on us to make sure that the mindset stays the same in here and we don’t go off the grid to find something. We need to stay the course. Over time, the results will come. Is that the message basically from the coaching staff that you will be rewarded like? Well, yeah. I mean, I think it’s it’s easy, right? I think we we can all go home and sleep well knowing we played another good hockey game. We’re competitors. We want to win. We’d love to see the puck go in the net, but right now it’s not. It’s on us to be mature about this and think that if we just keep bringing that I said it the same the other night. It’s the same thing on the flip side. Just the way you defended one of the most uh explosive teams in the NHL. Yeah, I thought we protected the middle of the ice pretty good. You know, they’re going to he’s going to get some looks. Like it’s inevitable, but I thought we limited the great A’s and uh got some big saves from Chusty when we needed him and just another good hockey game. Uh sucks to be on the losing end, but like I said, it’s just about it’s a good test for us as a group right now for our mindset. And I uh you know, I love the way we’re playing um the last couple games. So, let’s just keep plugging away. And finally about your fourth line and what they brought to the table. Yeah, I thought Sam was best player in the rink tonight. He was unbelievable. That line just drove play every time and Sam was unbelievable. So happy to see him have success and once again he could have had four or five himself. It seemed like that whole line. So like I said, tons of good things. Getting a lot of contributions from a lot of different guys. Um if we keep plugging away, it’ll change. JT, interesting to hear the words of JT Miller when he started off by saying, “Let’s not make more of it than it is. It’s game five of the season.” There is that perspective, Henrik. But like you said, you know, staying confident is going to be a challenge. How much of it is a challenge even in game five when things go the way they did? Well, it definitely helps when you have a captain talking like that. I think that’s going to give a lot of confidence to the group and not to overreact and he talked about they can’t get out of character in the way they play because they are playing a great team game. They are getting the looks. So the danger is you start trying to do too much and suddenly you start getting hurt. But when when you have one of the top players, the one of the leaders of the team have that approach, I think it’s going to help them going into next game. He said it perfectly. Uh that’s the way a captain steps up and in fact that’s why you name a captain to represent the team’s message the right way. You know, when you’re looking at the way the team’s playing right now, and you have to take the big picture, it will even itself out at the end of the season. There are enough nights during the year that you win when you shouldn’t. And right now, the Rangers just have a string of bad luck where they just haven’t won games that they should. That’s well said, Steve. Now, on the topic of Conor McDavid, and you heard JT Miller praise his team for the way that went tonight. Played 1921 of ice time, did number 97. Had two shots on goal, only three attempts. He did have the assist on the empty net goal, but by and large, Steve, the Rangers bottled him up pretty well. Hey, look, this is the best the Rangers have played defensively in over two years, okay? Because when you look at how their chances are coming back against them, it’s not because they’re going one-on-one and losing the puck. They were tight on McDavid. His first shift was that shot that we just saw. And then after that, there was a lot of silence from him. They were tight at the blue line because the back check was strong. I thought the sticks were great in the Dzone. Gabricov stands out. He’s got a terrific defensive stick. He had a number of plays that he broke up with himself. So, he’s a good example out there. And he and Fox, they’re really showing themselves as a shut down pair. You’ve got the best scorer in the NHL, Dry Cidle, and the best playmaker. And they got completely uh shut down in my opinion. Yeah. And we talked about this the start of the season that the biggest improvement had to be in their own end. They still have a lot of skill up front, but the way they’re are going to play in their own end is going to really determine the success of this season. And what we’ve seen so far is really, you know, being in the right place, playing from inside out and not the other way around. We saw a lot of that last year kind of chasing around, ended up on the on the boards instead of in the middle of the ice. So right now they’re taking care of the middle of the ice and and it just gives them more structure. It helps Eager to play his game. He’s looking so good right now and and and again we touched on it going into this game. The structure Eager is playing with is is a factor from how well they’re playing in front of him as well. So again, a lot of good things to take away here. They have to, like the captain just said, just stay the

Stuart Skinner stopped all 30 shots he saw from the Rangers in a 2-0 Oiler win at The Garden. The Rangers are still looking for their first goal in front of their home crowd after 3 games. Trent Frederic scored his first goal of the season that would prove to be the game winner for Edmonton.

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Rangers Fall To Oilers 2-0 At The Garden | New York Rangers