The adjectives pile up, listless, inept, pathetic, lackadaisical, ill-prepared, embarrassing.
You might think those apply to the New York Rangers, but you would be wrong. They all apply to the Rangers head coach David Quinn.
Yes the Rangers are the youngest team in the NHL and prone to mistakes and in need of serious lessons.
The team is also among the most talented and in need of a good head coach, bot what they are saddled with now.
Fourteen games into the season and fans should already be looking to next year.
On Tuesday night, the Rangers were used and abused by yet one more NHL club, this time the New Jersey Devils in a 5-2 loss.
They have lost four straight, 0-3-1, and dropped to 4-7-3, and are hardly even competitive in any their wins never ind the losses.
“We talked in length about the opportunity we had, that we had lots of excuses for maybe not playing well, and I told the team we’ve got to find a reason to win,” Devils head coach Lindy Ruff said. “We came out well and played a strong game, a very tight game.”
Mackenzie Blackwood made 37 saves to get the win. Though to be fair, most of those shots were at the crest on his sweater.
“At the start it was a little bit of a getting your feet back in the pond and playing so there’s a little bit of a jump right in the fire,” Blackwood said. “Kind of no time to think about it, just play, so that was good. The less thinking and more playing sometimes is better. I really like that. It was a tough game. It was first one back and I battled my energy a little bit, but it’s part of playing a lot so I was happy with it overall. I think it’s a good building step.”
Colin Blackwell and Pavel Buchnevich scored the Rangers goals which amounted to little more than lipstick on another pig.
“For the majority of the game they outhit us, outskated us, outworked us, won more battles,” Rangers forward Chris Kreider said. “They flat-out wanted it more. It’s unacceptable.”
Pretty much that’s true, but he needed to add out-coached.
“A lot of things that happened tonight you wonder why,” Quinn said. “We’re in a situation where we haven’t won an awful lot and we’ve got to understand the difference between winning and losing and what you need to do to do it. You would think we would generate some momentum getting that goal at the end of the second. It just didn’t happen. A lot of things didn’t happen tonight for us.”
Yegor Sharangovich scored the first of three third period goals for the Devils, the game-winner, for the 3-2 lead.
Nicholas Merkley also scored for New Jersey.
“That’s probably a result of the things I said earlier, of waiting to skate, of losing battles, of not being physical,” Kreider said. “There were some shifts where we were buzzing in the offensive zone a little bit … but obviously it’s not enough. To go 60 minutes without drawing a power play means we’re not doing the right things away from the puck to support each other, to put each other in positions to draw penalties.”
Pavel Zacha and Will Butcher also scored for New Jersey.
Mikhail Maltsev added empty net goal to ice the win.
Igor Shesterkin made 32 saves in the loss in a wasted effort.
“The most upsetting thing is we got away from the things we were doing well,” Kreider said. “We were listless and lifeless and it’s unacceptable.”
It’s time someone lost a job in the Rangers organization.
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