If the New York Rangers play any fewer minutes in a game, they may not need any quarters for the laundry at the end of the night.
Playing 60 minutes of hockey has been a challenge for head coach Gerard Gallant’s roster.
On Saturday night, the Rangers “played” maybe six minutes of mediocre hockey.
If Gallant cannot get this squad of never-will-bes to respond, maybe general manager Chris Drury needs to make some changes or maybe he needs to find a new team to ruin.
In Calgary, the Flames used, abused, outworked, out-hustled, outplayed, and just embarrassed the Rangers in a 6-0 rout.
And it wasn’t that close.
“It stings,” New York’s Chris Kreider said. “You don’t want it to ever happen again, but we’ve got to go home and get better in a hurry and work on our process. It doesn’t matter what the score is in the game. We have to play the same way. We have to trust each other and trust the system. We can’t get away from that regardless of the situation or the context.”
The Flames’ Jacob Markstrom made 22 saves for his fourth shutout of the season.
The Rangers have lost three games in a regulation by an aggregate of 16-2.
Johnny Gaudreau scored twice and and Matthew Tkachuk added a single marker and four points on the night for the Flames.
“Tonight we had some pretty good chances and they were able to go in for us, which was nice,” Tkachuk said. “We needed a game like this to get going again offensively because this team needs us on a nightly basis to be successful.”
Chances?! The only thing the Rangers didn’t do was gift wrap the chances, put a bow on the box and hand deliver to the Calgary bench.
“It says a lot more about the team and the way we’re playing,” Markstrom said. “It’s really defensively sound and guys are blocking shots, and not only on the penalty kill and 5-on-5, but [the power play] has been great, it was great again today. Early, that was a difference-maker. We obviously got the goal from [Sean Monahan] and got a couple big kills that gave us the momentum to go the other way.”
And don’t use the two-games-in-two-nights excuse.
Brad Richardson scored his first of the season for Calgary.
Milan Lucic had a goal in the third period to make it 5-0 before Tkachuk scored his goal for a 6-0 final.
“I don’t know. I wasn’t really thinking there. It just happened,” Tkachuk said. “I was just kind of in an awkward position there backing up into the goalie and couldn’t really stop my momentum, so I just thought that was the best way to go about it. Lucky it worked out, but it was the sixth goal, so I guess it really didn’t matter. Still fun to see it go into the net.”
Sean Monahan opened the scoring for Calgary with a goal in the first period.
Igor Shesterkin made 31 saves in the drubbing.
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