SALT LAKE CITY — The frustration was palpable in the visiting locker room at the Delta Center on Saturday night.

Why?

Simply put, for all the troubles the New York Rangers have had at home and the seemingly endless criticism they’ve been receiving for that, their calling card had remained that they were the National Hockey League’s top team on the road.

No longer.

A 3-2 loss at the hands of the Utah Mammoth concluded an 0-for-the-trip week with three straight defeats; a loss in Vegas by the same score on Tuesday, followed by a 6-3 setback at the hands of the league-best Colorado Avalanche just two days later, concluding with what their head coach deemed as an unacceptable showing.

“I thought we got outplayed,” said Rangers bench boss Mike Sullivan, whose team fell to 9-4-1 on the road and are now below “NHL .500” with a 10-11-2 mark overall.

“I didn’t think, for whatever reason, we had the juice, the energy. If you don’t bring a certain amount of energy to a game, it’s hard. Today’s game is fast, and that’s a young, fast team. I just didn’t think we won a whole lot of foot races. I didn’t think we won a lot of puck battles. When you don’t win foot races or puck battles, you don’t tend to have the puck. I felt like that was the case for a lot of the game.”

Truth be told, that’s perhaps a bit of a harsh assessment, as Saturday night’s affair in the soda shoppe capital of the country was an entertaining, back-and-forth affair that the Rangers had opportunities to win. J.J. Peterka opened the scoring at the 10:08 mark of the first to give Utah a 1-0 lead after a strong early push by the Blueshirts, but Rangers defenseman Vlad Gavrikov provided a strong response just minutes later, tipping home Adam Fox’s shot past Mammoth goalie Karel Vejmelka to tie the game at 1-1.

“That gave us a little bit of a bounceback I would say, a little momentum, and we tried to build on that,” Gavrikov said.  “(But this road trip), the results are obviously not there. Have to be more urgent and try to play a little more aggressive and find a way to score goals.”

Artemi Panarin actually gave the Rangers a 2-1 lead at the 8:07 mark of the second period, but things seemed to unravel after that.  New York mustered just ten shots on goal over the final two frames, and surrendered the game-tying goal to Clayton Keller later in the middle stanza and the game-winner off the stick of Nick DeSimone just 7:32 into the final frame.

In a bit of an unexpected tailspin after a road trip — a first for the Rangers all season — they now return home for a quick one-game visit to Madison Square Garden on Monday night against St. Louis, with the hope that the quick turnaround will help them erase the bad taste of three games away away from home gone bad.

“The schedule is quick like that, and any time you have a bad game, you pretty much have to hit the reset button,” said forward Will Cuylle. “You can’t be looking in the past. So, looking forward to the game on Monday and getting the win there.”