New York Rangers taken ten penalties and are thrashed 6-1 by the Colorado Avalanche

It felt like the New York Rangers were shorthanded more than at even strength as they were demolished by the Colorado Avalanche 6-1 in Denver.

There are a few things you shouldn’t do when you play a team that has lost six games in a row.  You shouldn’t give that team almost ten minutes of power play time in the first period. You should also not start that parade to the penalty box with a five minute major.

But that’s precisely what the Rangers did.  And not content to do that just in the first period, they  took three more penalties in the second period that led to a pair of two man advantages for the Avalanche.

To their credit, the Rangers gave up two goals during that first power play and then hung on, killing penalties and keeping the game close.  After all of those penalties, the Avs scored an even strength goal 12 minutes into the second period right after the best Ranger offensive shift of the game and it was all over.

Colorado was happy to pile it on,  putting an exclamation mark on the end of their losing streak.  They added three goals in the third period and the Rangers spoiled the shutout on a Ryan Strome breakaway.

Colorado ended up with 47 shots on goal and believe it or not, Alexandar Georgiev had a pretty good game.  He kept the Rangers in the game with some outstanding stops and four of the first five goals were deflections including one off Neal Pionk ‘s stick and the other off Gabriel Landeskog’s leg.

To add insult to injury, the final goal of the game was scored by Ryan Graves.  He’s a former fourth round Ranger draft pick who was traded to Colorado last February for Chris Bigras (who?).  It was Graves first NHL goal and to get it against the team that gave up on him must have felt just great.

Lack of discipline

The lack of discipline exhibited by the Blueshirts is disturbing.  Chris Kreider took two absolutely stupid, unnecessary penalties.  Mats Zuccarello jumped on the ice when there were clearly five Rangers in the Avalanche zone for the easiest too many men call ever.  Even though the major penalty to McLeod was an iffy call, the timing was just awful and ended the game for the Rangers when it had barely started.  Down 3-0 at the end of the second period, Zuccarello, one of the team’s most gifted forwards took a ten minute misconduct in a scrum with Patrik Nemeth.

How David Quinn is going to respond to this will be interesting.  Benching is clearly not the answer when the team needs their best players to win.  He will have a day and a half to figure it out.