Rangers take the night off in LA, lose 3-1

In Los Angeles, Cal Petersen made 22 saves and the Kings downed the New York Rangers, 3-1, on Monday night.

“Just like [Jonathan Quick] wasn’t going to hand the keys to the kingdom over to Cal, Cal’s going to fight to get them back, and there’s no better situation than that,” Kings head coach Todd McLellan said. “I think I said the other day, the one thing that Cal couldn’t control was how well Jonathan played, and he was happy for him, and I’m sure ‘Quickie’ is happy for Cal right now. But having both of them playing well, not a lot of teams can say that, and if we have that, we’re lucky.”

Rangers head coach Gerard Gallant has bemoaned his team’s inability to play a 60-minute game.

After Monday night, he he end up be happy with two to three minutes of decent play.

Gallant was not on the bench for the lazy performance from his club, he was placed on NHL COVID-19 protocol Sunday.

“We talked about before the game what they do in the neutral zone, and we just decided to work hard and not smart,” the Rangers’ Chris Kreider said. “We need to come with speed, support each other, and we made it really easy on them walking out of the zone, and then ultimately trying to get our feet going a little bit too late, and getting beat and giving them rushes and letting them advance the puck up the ice.”

The Hartford Wolf Pack’s Kris Knoblauch coached the Rangers.

The Rangers dropped to 23-10-4.

Mika Zibanejad scored in the third period to put New York on the board.

The Rangers were stalled by the LA 1-3-1 defense through the neutral zone. To be honest, the Rangers would have been stalled by an ice cream truck and a taco stand outside the arena.

“I think that’s what you saw at the beginning of the second period, and ultimately, it’s on us to settle down and regroup and commit to doing the right things to advance the puck and play the right way,” Kreider said. “We did that a little bit too late when we’d already given up the lead at that point. You didn’t nip it in the bud early in the game, so it’s on us. It’s on me.”

Phillip Danault and Blake Lizotte were the LA strikers.

Adrian Kempe added an empty-net goal to ice the win, though it was hardly necessary given the way the Rangers played.