Bruins 3 Rangers 2
BOSTON – After it had ended, after the Rangers had failed again to assert themselves in the playoff chase, one player after another and without exception insisted that the team had given a satisfactory effort here yesterday afternoon against the Bruins.
Insisted that the 60-minute performance was commensurate with the importance of the match.
If that is so, if the Rangers did in fact give everything they had against a Boston team that had come in with an eight-game winless streak (0-6-2) and had slipped to ninth place, then more’s the pity. Because if that’s so, if yesterday were truly the best the Rangers could come up with under the circumstances, they are in far worse trouble than anyone would want to admit.
Of course, if what seemed apparent from the press box were instead true, if the Rangers were unable to rouse themselves into a more emphatic effort than the one that unfolded from the opening faceoff, then that’s indicative of serious problems, as well.
Any way you look at it, yesterday’s 3-2 loss leaves the Rangers in 11th place, four points out of a playoff berth with 31 games to play. They’re four games under .500. They haven’t been able to win even two in a row since Jan. 10-13. They’re 5-18-6 against the 10 teams they trail in the East. Four points out of a playoff berth, four million miles away from being a contender.
On Saturday, John Muckler had framed yesterday’s match as a playoff-type confrontation. On Saturday, Muckler had said that anything less than a playoff-type effort against the sputtering B’s would be, “unacceptable.”
And so after having last played on Thursday while the Bruins had grinded out a tie in Philadelphia on Saturday afternoon, the Rangers played a first period in which they generated two scoring chances. They got one at the 4:00 mark, but Petr Nedved missed the net from the right circle. They got another at the 19:00 mark, when Mathieu Schneider got a low left wing backhand on Byron Dafoe. In other words, they forced Dafoe to make one meaningful stop in the first 20 minutes.
While playing with such urgency, the Rangers somehow managed to fall behind 1-0 on Sergei Samsonov’s backdoor power play tap-in of Ray Bourque’s diagonal feed from the top of the right circle. Such injustice!
The Rangers made adjustments at the intermission against Boston’s trap, had more success in breaking through the neutral zone, and for their trouble forced Dafoe to make two significant saves in this period-a stretching glove save on Brian Leetch at 1:30, then a pad save on Mike Knuble from in front at 19:45.
Somehow in this period the Bruins extended their lead to 2-0 at 16:27 when Dimitri Khristich banged in a long rebound of a rear-board ricochet. The irony! Four scoring chances in 40 minutes, yet somehow down by a pair!
Four chances to score in 40 minutes, not a single rebound among them, and the Rangers insisted their effort had been acceptable. Muckler insisted the effort was acceptable. We’ll not waste anyone’s time or this paper’s space by documenting any of those words.
Wayne Gretzky did not have a sharp game. Nedved, whom the Rangers desperately need to provide some help on the attack, was barely visible in the offensive zone, and now has contributed six points (2-4) in his last 16 games. Marc Savard actually was the strongest Ranger pivot, but Muckler was able to find him only 13:43 of ice, 3:39 in the third period. That was, however, 13:43 more of ice than Manny Malhotra received. That’s right; the lad did not geteven a single shift.
“Every time I wanted to put him out they had [Jason] Allison’s line out there,” Muckler said, referring to Boston’s top unit of Allison, Samsonov and Khristich. “That’s not a match-up I wanted.”
