The New York Rangers lost a crucial home game to the Philadelphia Flyers with Henrik Lundqvist starting in goal for the first time in almost a month.
More questions than answers face the New York Rangers after a disheartening loss to the Flyers. Philadelphia swept both ends of a home and home, outscoring the Blueshirts 10-5 in the process.
Unlike Friday, when a one-sided score didn’t reflect the closeness of game, this game the score was closer than the game. The Flyers totally dominated special teams play in the first two periods and a furious comeback by the Rangers in the third period made it a two goal game.
For Henrik Lundqvist, it was hard to judge his performance. The Flyers were given a power play 23 seconds into the game and scored and the Ranger defense was missing for most of the first two periods. Lundqvist allowed one even strength goal and and shut the Flyers out in a very strong third period.
Coming out of this start there would be reason to believe that Lundqvist may not start again this season or he could be in net on Tuesday against St. Louis. While there was some rust in his play, he was hung out to dry repeatedly, especially on the Philadelphia power plays.
Mika Zibanejad had a fabulous game and could have had five goals instead of the two he scored. At long last Anthony DeAngelo got on the scoreboard against his former favorite team. The Rangers finally got going when Quinn paired Zibanejad and Panarin and benched Ryan Strome who had an awful game.
The biggest question is how the Rangers could come out in such an important game and play so badly. The irony is that the Blueshirts played the Flyers evenly five-on-five. In fact, the Rangers had 46 shot attempts at even strength compared to 24 for Philadelphia. They had 17 high danger scoring chances compared to eight for the Flyers, all according to naturalstattricks.com.
It was special teams play that killed the Rangers in the first two periods when the Flyers built up a 5-1 lead. On five power plays the Flyers had 16 shot attempts of which nine were high danger. They converted on three of them. After two power play goals in the first period they also scored a shorthanded goal, a turn of events that absolutely crushed the Rangers.
It was a golden opportunity lost for the Rangers, but as much as they need to win games, their rivals need to win as well and they haven’t been. The Blueshirts will be watching the scoreboard to see how the Blue Jackets do at home against Vancouver. If they lose that game, despite losaing both ends of the series with the Flyers, the Rangers will have lost no ground to Columbus and only one point to the Hurricanes.
Still the questions remains. Was that the last we will see of Henrik Lundqvist? And are the Rangers the team that looked outclassed in the first two periods or are they the dynamic team that dominated the third period?