With the New York Rangers, you sort of get to a place where you wonder what’s point in following in them if you are a fan.
One game after handing the Toronto Maple Leafs a loss, the Rangers fell behind 3-0 to the Buffalo Sabres on home ice before putting up two lipstick goals in a 3-2 loss on Friday.
Carter Hutton got the easy with over the Rangers for the Sabres – file photo by Lewis Bleiman
The franchise brought in John Davidson as the new president and the thought was the organization would be mobile and swift to make decisions to improve the team.
Everyone is still waiting.
“I’m surprised about tonight,” Rangers coach David Quinn said. “I’m going to be honest with you, I didn’t see this coming. It’s something that I didn’t expect. At the end of the day our top players have to be way better than they were tonight.”
That’s the response? You were surprised? This has been the modus operandi for this roster for two years.
THis is the sort of response and effort on the ice that should cost people jobs.
Carter Hutton made 37 saves to embarrass the Rangers.
“We didn’t try to make it an offensive track meet; we tried to bottle up their speed,” Jack Eichel said. “They’re a fast team, they make a lot of plays, so I thought our neutral zone was good and our ‘D’ did a great job of breaking the puck out with [Hutton]. … We had some opportunistic goals, and when they did have lengthy shifts in our end we were able to find ways to get the puck out. It’s a gritty effort.”
You know the effort is bad when Eichel is being quoted in these posts.
Mika Zibanejad and Chris Kreider scored the late third period goals to put window dressing around the pig.
“We just were out of sync,” Zibanejad said. “We weren’t close for the support. We didn’t play fast like we want to. When things are going for us that’s how we play. We didn’t do close to enough today to be able to win the game.”
Another worthless commentary point.
Jimmy Vesey, Zemgus Girgensons and Sam Reinhart were the Sabres strikers.
“[Vesey] makes a big play there,” Eichel said. “We were in the zone for a while, we were gassed, but we noticed the odd-man rush. They were playing offense, they’re obviously tired, and we were able to take advantage of it. It’s a big goal in the hockey game for us.”
[WATCH: All Sabres vs. Rangers highlights]
Alexandar Georgiev made 25 saves in the loss.
“We as a group have to be more consistent. It’s just not good enough night in, night out,” Quinn said. “We have good nights and we have OK nights, and tonight wasn’t even an OK night. … We played slow.”
There is nothing worse than a coach not taking responsibility for the actions or efforts of the players in his charge.
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