NEW YORK — The Rangers are one loss away from exiting the playoffs in the first round for the first time since 2011, and in their Game 4 loss to the Penguins on Thursday night, a 5-0 rout at Madison Square Garden, New York looked like it had already checked out before the first period even ended.
Things already were grim for the Rangers after Eric Fehr’s net-crashing goal 1:09 into the game. Things got worse for New York at the 7:11 mark, when Evgeni Malkin’s shot was deflected first by Sidney Crosby, then by Patric Hornqvist, past Henrik Lundqvist.
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The moment you knew the rest of the night was going to be a formality was when rookie Conor Sheary scored on a breakaway with 3:48 left in the opening frame. The Rangers dragged their bodies up and down the ice until they were booed off it, and it was one of those times that you could tell 3-0 wasn’t the most dangerous lead in hockey.
“They got a break there on the first goal on the rush early,” said Rangers forward Eric Staal. “I had a chance to make it 1-1, and it didn’t fall. Then we got them on the power play, and they were scoring goals and feeling good, and it was just a tougher hill for us to climb.”
Rick Nash, like the rest of the Rangers, fell hard in Game 4. (Getty Images)
Or, as Henrik Lundqvist put things more succinctly, “I’m not going to analyze it too much. It was not good enough. Really bad game. I need to be better. Simple as that.”
Malkin scored on a power play four minutes into the second period, and scored again on a power play 3:28 into the third. That would just be bookkeeping if it wasn’t so very troubling for the Rangers to know that Malkin, back from injury for three games now, is back on his game. He had secondary assists on power-play goals in Games 2 and 3, but this was an MVP at his best, finding the back of the net for the first time since March 6.
The second goal Malkin scored came with Antti Raanta in net for the Rangers, because Lundqvist got the hook four seconds after the first one, having allowed four goals on 18 shots. It was the second time Lundqvist was pulled in the series, but the first was in Game 1 when he took a stick to the eye from teammate Marc Staal.
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“If you give up four goals on 18 shots, you have to expect a change might be happening,” Lundqvist said.
As shaken as the Rangers looked throughout Thursday night, Lundqvist remains the reason they can believe in a rally in this series. For one thing, the last time Lundqvist got yanked from a playoff game for ineffectiveness, he came back with a shutout to wrap up the 2014 Eastern Conference finals against the Canadiens. The time before that, in the 2014 first round, Lundqvist bounced back from a shellacking by the Flyers to see through a 2-1 win in Game 7.
The other series the Rangers played on their way to the Stanley Cup Final in 2014 was against the Penguins, and they found themselves in the same position as now — down 3-1, headed to Pittsburgh for Game 5. Lundqvist allowed only one goal in each of the final three games.
Conor Sheary gets in on the scoring against Henrik Lundqvist. (Getty Images)
“You just have to believe in yourself and what you’re doing out there,” Lundqvist said. “Just believe that the things you’ve been doing well in the past are going to work for you. Not overthink. Not overanalyze it. When you play a team with a lot of confidence and really skilled players, you need to be on top of things. Otherwise, they’re going to take advantage of mistakes.”
The Penguins now are a team that routinely takes advantage of mistakes. They are 7 for 19 on the power play in the series, and do things like take a simple turnover at the blue line by Kevin Klein and turn it into the backbreaking goal that Sheary scored.
Meanwhile, since their 16-3-2 start to the season, the Rangers have won 31 games and lost 34. The last time they held an opponent to fewer than two goals was a 2-1 win over the Ducks on March 16, which was 16 games ago. The last time they had three straight wins against playoff teams was February.
“We have to win three in a row,” Zuccarello said. “Easy as that.”
The Rangers have come back from 3-1 deficits to win playoff series each of the last two seasons. It just doesn’t seem easy as that this time.