In a game in which the New York Rangers were in desperate need for points, the Blueshirts instead gave up seven goal on home ice at Madison Square Garden on Sunday evening against the Columbus Blue Jackets.
A lack of execution paired with many defensive breakdowns caused the Rangers to give up six goals after being deadlocked in a 1-1 tie at the conclusion of the first period. All seven goals Columbus scored were at even-strength and prevented the Rangers from going into first place for the wild card race in the Eastern Conference. Blue Jacket Adam Fantilli led Columbus with a hat-trick.
Here's what New York Rangers Head Coach Peter Laviolette and three players — J.T. Miller, Mika Zibanejad and K'Andre Miller — had to say regarding the loss postgame and how they plan to move forward.
Significant 3/10/25 Quotes from Peter Laviolette
Laviolette had many things to say during his postgame media availability, but most of it focused on the defensive lapses in the matchup.
"It came in different ways against us tonight. Whether it was getting beat, a coverage breakdown, a bad bounce, or someone falling — each goal happened for a different reason," Laviolette said. "At the end of the day, it's not good enough. We gave up big chances right in front of our net, and that can't happen."
"When it did break down, it was bad. There was guys right in front of [goaltender Jonathan Quick] with no support and no help. You go back and look at all the goals, one of them was off a skate, a guy falls in a corner, a broken stick come back on the two-on-two. But everything could have been done differently and done better, it needs to be better inside of that," Laviolette said.
"When you look at some of those goals and where those guys were standing at in front of the net, where we're at inside the season, how we played last night and where we're going next, Quick is a warrior in there," Laviolette said.
"I thought especially early on there was chances where I thought we had the opportunity to score," Laviolette said. "We missed the net an awful lot tonight. They blocked a lot of shots and their goaltender made some saves; a combination of all that kept [our] score to three."
Significant 2/25/25 Quotes from Players
Most of the players were obviously upset in the locker room. They remained very tight lipped and mostly spoke of the games they have left to play on the Rangers' schedule.
"I'm not going to get too negative," J.T. Miller said. "We have a lot of important games coming up and this team has been one of the best teams in the league in the last couple months and these are bigger games this time of year but we're going to get the chance to right this ship in the next couple days."
"We have like nine games [left] in 15 or 16 days. We don't have time to pout. We'd like to win them all but it's not good enough and we'll get better next game," J.T. Miller said.
"I think [these next games] are three completely different games," Mika Zibanejad said. "We just got to get back to defending like we have been. Obviously out power play will have to get going too ... Honestly, just play better."
"[Ottawa is] good off those transitions and those turnovers. They made the most out of those turnovers we made," Zibanejad said.
"We play a lot of games quickly here; we need to throw this one away and move on as quick as possible," K'Andre Miller said.
"This one sucks and its going to sting for a little bit," K'Andre Miller said. "We're going to try and turn the page as quick as we can and we've got a lot of games to finish this stretch.