4 tough takeaways from the New York Rangers' loss to the Avalanche in Colorado

The New York Rangers are moving onto the final leg of their three-game road trip still looking for their first point out west and their first win in three games. That's following a frustrating 6-3 loss against the Colorado Avalanche last night that dropped the team's record to 10-10-2 on the year.

That score is a bit misleading, though, because two of those goals were empty-netters as New York pressed late. The Avalanche played the type of game everyone expected, handily outplaying the Blueshirts throughout, but the Rangers found ways to stay in the fight deep into the third period. And they did it in ways we haven't seen much this season.

That makes it all the more frustrating because the Rangers suffered from a ton of self-inflicted wounds, some of which were set in motion before the puck even dropped.

A rare, bad night for Igor Shesterkin

When the Rangers lose a close game where they were obviously outplayed, the reason is almost always Igor Shesterkin. This was not one of those games.

Shesterkin gave up four goals on the night. There's a pretty strong case he should've stopped at least three of them. In fact, Money Puck put each of the four shots' xG (expected goal) ratings at .21, .05(!), .09 and .13 respectively. For context, JT Miller's first goal on the night had a shot xG of .75. If you missed the game and you're wondering to yourself "what the heck kinda goal could have just a .05 expected goal score?" I'll let (defenseman) Cale Makar take it from here.

That happened late in the second period when New York had maintained a 2-1 lead for nearly the entire duration following an early score by Adam Edstrom.

It was Igor's worst game statistically since their embarrassing 5-0 defeat at the hands of the Islanders back on November 8. Despite his ability to consistently elevate his game beyond what most goalies could ever achieve, this kind of night is part of the package. Shesterkin will get cold here and there and unfortunately this episode came at a particularly inopportune moment.

Also, penalties, penalties...and penalties

Here's a good rule of thumb: if you take SIX penalties in a game against the highest scoring team in the entire National Hockey League, you're probably going to lose.

The most annoying part is the team's struggling penalty kill actually stepped up in a big way, killing off five of the six, including the first four of the game. But Will Cuylle's minor for tripping less than a minute into the third finally proved costly when Brock Nelson buried a power play goal. Costly for the Rangers because it gave Colorado its first lead of the entire game at 3-2. Costly for me because I then had to find the goal on the Avalanche Twitter account and be subjected to "humor" that's best described as a Geneva Convention violation.

The Rangers ranked 23rd in the league in penalty kill percentage coming into last night's game, so a power play goal against was definitely an eventuality most fans were prepared for. The surprising part is Mike Sullivan's squad has been one of the league's most disciplined, ranking seventh to last in penalty minutes per game thus far this season at just 7.7.

That number has obviously climbed significantly after last night and a sudden lack of on-ice discipline is the type of problem this team cannot afford to let stick around. Knowing what I know about Sullivan, I'd suspect this will be a topic returned to next practice.

Then an attempted lineup shakeup becomes a brutal failure

Several factors likely played into the coaching staff's decisions to shuffle the deck on line combinations last night. I'm sure losing two close games back-to-back before having to play arguably the best team in the league played some sort of role in that choice. We probably won't know what the true drivers were.

What we do know is that their fun little experiment ended up blowing all our eyebrows off.

The new top line consisted of Vincent Trocheck, Artemi Panarin and JT Miller. The good news is they certainly were taking shots in the offensive zone. 13 to be exact. The problem is those were just shot attempts. In reality, only three of those shots ended up on goal.

That wasn't even the worst of it for this line. For that we must talk defense. Take a look at the Avalanche's first goal using NHL.com's EDGE goal visualizer and tell me if you think JT Miller ever gets in front of this puck before it's in the net. I'll wait.

No, right? Well, the one positive result of the captain's effort is it certainly continued to inspire his teammates. One teammate in particular named Artemi Panarin, who seemed to take it personally that Miller would dare try to be more lazy than him. So, he loosened those skates and said"Hold my bag of hair."

It's almost impressive. Unless you're Mike Sullivan, who didn't seem too amused when speaking after the game about the way Panarin has been defending.

The Rangers new second line was Mika Zibanejad centering Alexis Lafrenière and Will Cuylle. This one is truly baffling. If you asked me before the game what would happen if we mashed these guys together, I probably would've said "Nothing. Literally they'd do nothing." And guess what? Would've been pretty close! They managed just a single shot on goal at even strength in the whole game. I've generally liked a lot of Sullivan's philosophy and style so far this season, and I'm optimistic he will take this as a lesson we all should've learned early last year. Do NOT separate Lafrenière from Trocheck and Panarin anymore.

And the defensemen who really needed to step up tonight...did not

Ongoing knicks and bruises on the roster also inspired some creative minute management last night. Will Borgen was out of the lineup yet again after returning Tuesday night in Vegas from his upper body injury. Sullivan has said this injury appears to be sticking around for the foreseeable future and the Rangers will just have to manage his usage. Borgen surprised everyone with his great play leading up to the injury, and his absence made his impact show through even more starkly.

The scratch came on a night when Adam Fox's playing time was limited to under 20 minutes after he was on the ice for over 26 in Las Vegas. Unfortunately, the other defensive pairings struggled to take on the added responsibility. I suppose this is what we should expect when Braden Schneider ends the night with the team's most ice time.

Schneider getting caught deep in the neutral zone after throwing a half-hearted forecheck, then sauntering back down the ice just in time to dispassionately wave his stick with one hand in front of a streaking Nate MacKinnon is exactly what I would do if I was asked to step in on D for New York. That's why I'm in street clothes. With each passing day I'm wondering more and more why Braden Schneider is not.