Senators 4 – Rangers 1

Bob Nevin and Donnie Marshall were the team’s leading scorers. Cesare Maniago and rookie Ed Giacomin formed the goaltending tandem. Second-year GM Emile Francis had just begun his first term behind the bench after dismissing Red Sullivan in midseason. The home games were played at the old barn on 50th and Eighth.

It was 1965-66, 38 years ago, and it was the last time the Rangers were farther out of a playoff spot with 23 games to play than they now stand, 11 points behind the eighth-place Islanders following yesterday afternoon’s 4-1 Garden defeat to the Senators. They’re even seven points behind the ninth-place Sabres.

The trade deadline is three weeks from today. There is reason to question whether GM Glen Sather, with so much work to do between now and then on the player personnel side of his job description, might turn over his coaching duties to either Tom Renney or Terry O’Reilly the rest of the way.

“This is not the time to talk about that,” Sather said. “That’s something that might be a topic to discuss at [today’s] practice.”

That comment should not, however, be interpreted to mean an announcement is forthcoming. Sather’s policy has been to talk only about the games in his post-game press briefings, and to respond to queries about the GM’s portion of the job on off-days or at morning skates.

If you’re counting, the Blueshirts are 3-11-2 in their last 16 overall, 2-7 in their last nine at home. They’re 2-6 since Eric Lindros went down, but then, they were 1-5-2 in No. 88’s last eight in the lineup. They’re 0-2 without Jaromir Jagr, who hopes to be able to return from his groin injury Thursday against the Islanders, but then, they were 3-6 in No. 68’s first nine games with the club.

Predominantly because the fifth-overall Senators approached the game as a walkover, the Blueshirts managed to take a 1-0 lead late in the second on Bobby Holik’s tip before self-destructing by giving Ottawa three straight power plays within a span of 3:57 bridging the second intermission. The Senators scored only on the first PP opportunity, but still, the game had gotten away.

“I don’t know how we can address it any more than we have,” said Sather, whose team is the most penalized in the league. “You go to the player and talk to him and he says, ‘I know, I know; I’m not going to do that.’ “

Either benching players has never occurred to the coach, or the GM gave a lot of his players no-benching clauses in their contract. Maybe that’s it.

Whatever, the Senators inevitably gained the lead, the 2-1 goal coming at 7:11 when Brian Leetch bumped Bryan Smolinski into Jussi Markkanen just as Zdeno Chara’s shot from the right point glanced off Leetch’s head into the net. It might have been called goaltender interference – Smolinski made no effort to avoid contact with the goaltender – but it was not called at all. Forty-two seconds later, the Senators scored again.

“These things will happen to us as a result of the situation we are in; we have to do a lot more good things to have calls go our way,” said Holik. “That non-call is no excuse for our results, whether today or the last three weeks.”

Spoken like Phil Goyette.