Plenty of credit needs to be given to the New York Rangers, they have played well during a rough stretch of the season against tough opponents like the Colorado Avalanche, Dallas Stars, and Ottawa Senators. On Sunday, they gave the Vegas Golden Knights a real fight. But in overtime, the Rangers experienced a bad missed call.
Rangers defenseman Matthew Robertson was skating up center ice before he was taken down by Mitch Marner's stick. Marner had stuck his stick outward, and it made contact with Robertson, forcing him to fall. The thing is, the on-ice officials didn't call a penalty on Marner. That caused an uproar on the Rangers bench, including head coach Mike Sullivan. The Golden Knights went on to win 3-2 in the final seconds on a goal from Jack Eichel. After the non-call, Zibanejad was letting the officials hear it.
While speaking with reporters after the game, Zibanejad continued to rip the officials over the missed tripping call on Marner, and the Rangers not getting a single power play opportunity in the game.
"Like, really? Zero power plays and you don’t call that? I don’t know. Again, we can’t control it. It stings now. We could probably look at other things that we could’ve done better not to get to that point, but thought that one was pretty obvious," said Zibanejad, h/t Mollie Walker of the New York Post.
Mika Zibanejad criticizes officials for missed call in Rangers' OT loss to Golden Knights
Zibanejad isn't kidding about the team receiving zero power plays. Granted, the refs the entire game barely called penalties. The Rangers and Golden Knights received offsetting five-minute majors for a fight between Sam Carrick and Keegan Kolesar, offsetting roughing penalties on Jaroslav Chmelar and Ben Hutton, and offsetting roughing penalties on Will Borgen and Brett Howden. The only power play of the entire game went to the Golden Knights after Artemi Panarin was called for high sticking late in the second period.
Sullivan was asked about the non-call on Marner, and said, "you guys can be the judge." Sullivan also took issue with the roughing penalty on Borgen, as if it was just called on the Golden Knights, maybe Tomas Hertl wouldn't score the game-tying goal in the closing seconds of regulation.
"There was nothing going on. The implication of that at that time of game, the difference between a 5-on-4 vs. a 6-on-5 is significant," said Sullivan, h/t SNY.
It really was a case of what could have been for the Rangers. They can take solace in the fact that they did emerge with a point, but two points would have been better. It's possible, if the tripping penalty was called, maybe the Rangers score on a power play or at least force the game to a shootout.
But there are no do-overs in sports. The Rangers can take this as a bit of a learning experience. The team is playing better overall, as they secured six out of eight possible points in these last four games. It's on the Rangers to keep up this play.