The Rangers’ bubble life is suddenly in danger of popping.
A pair of goals in 71 seconds early in the second period sank the Rangers on Monday as they fell to the Hurricanes, 4-1, in Game 2 of the Stanley Cup qualifiers at Scotiabank Arena. They now trail 2-0 in the best-of-five series and will need a win Tuesday night to extend their stay in Toronto.
“Between now and [Tuesday] night at eight o’clock, we have to learn that we can’t keep shooting ourselves in the foot,” coach David Quinn said. “Our lack of patience is killing us right now. Was it better than it was [in Game 1]? Yeah, it was. But we didn’t come here to get incrementally better. We came here to win hockey games. We’re not doing enough.”
Henrik Lundqvist started again for Igor Shesterkin, who was still unfit to play, and recorded 30 saves. He had made sure the Rangers got to the first intermission tied 1-1, but any good feelings about the first 20 minutes were quickly flushed away in the first 2:22 of the second period.
Andrei Svechnikov, who went on to tally a hat trick, struck three seconds into a power play on a knuckler that fluttered over Lundqvist’s shoulder for a 2-1 lead. Then Tony DeAngelo’s failed clearing attempt and a misplay by Filip Chytil gave way to a Jordan Martinook goal at 2:22 to make it 3-1, forcing Quinn to call a timeout to try to regroup his team.
The Hurricanes celebrate a goal against the RangersGetty Images“Without question, we got deflated after giving up those two goals in the first 2 ¹/₂ minutes of the second,” Quinn said. “It really just changed the whole game.”
From there, the Hurricanes played like the experienced team that reached the Eastern Conference finals last year while the Rangers largely reverted to the style of play that plagued them in Game 1. Quinn tried to jumble the lines starting midway through the second period but none of the combinations could unlock the offense.
“It’s a hard way to start off a period,” defenseman Marc Staal said. “We had some momentum going in the first. We could have done a better job of staying more connected and sticking with what we were doing. I think we got away from it a little bit.”
The 20-year-old Svechnikov, meanwhile, finished off his hat trick late in the third period when he scored off a two-on-one that Lundqvist had little chance of stopping.
The Rangers only put 24 shots on net and Petr Mrazek stopped 23 of them — the only exception coming on Artmei Panarin’s five-on-three goal that tied the game midway through the first period.
The Hurricanes had taken an early lead once again when Svechnikov slipped a shot between Lundqvist’s side and right arm at 4:32 of the first. The Rangers responded to it better than they did after going down 1-0 just 61 seconds into Game 1, but the end result remained the same.
The mojo the Rangers found during their midseason push to even get in playoff position was sparked by a big comeback. Now they will have to muster another to save their season.
“We need everybody in that room to be just a little bit smarter, a little bit more patient, work a little bit harder, win more wall battles,” Quinn said. “All those things add up. We did it probably for 20 minutes and then just when we got down 3-1, you could feel it on the bench. That’s not a feeling we’ve had very often since the turn of the calendar.”
