The Rangers are headed again to Tampa with their season on life help.
In dropping their third straight sport to the Lightning — a 3-1 defeat because of a go-ahead objective late within the third interval from Ondrej Palat in Sport 5 Thursday evening at Madison Sq. Backyard — the Rangers must win the following two contests to have any hope of a Stanley Cup Closing berth.
The Rangers might have confronted and overcome a 3-2 deficit within the final two sequence, however these weren’t towards the defending back-to-back champions, who are actually one win away from their third straight look within the Cup Closing.
For the second time within the final three video games, Palat scored within the closing two minutes of regulation to safe the win. This one got here with 1:50 left on the clock and simply minutes after Ryan Strome missed a golden alternative on a wide-open internet.
The Rangers had an opportunity for the go-ahead objective when Andrew Copp despatched a backhanded feed previous Lightning defenseman Zach Bogosian, however the move was slightly behind Strome and the second-line middle couldn’t get all of his stick on it.
“I believe there’s occasions the place I’m making an attempt to place the puck to the online and possibly it’s not the suitable play, possibly there’s one other play to be made or a less complicated [play] to be made,” Copp mentioned. “We received plenty of good offensive gamers and we’ve seen plenty of these performs work. Playoff time, pucks to the online.
“You see all three objectives are comparatively innocent photographs that sort of discover their approach with the screens and the site visitors, ideas or no matter. I believe as a mindset, basically, we wish to get extra pucks to the online.”
Had Copp linked with Strome for what would have been the go-ahead objective at the moment, or any of the opposite related performs, this is perhaps a really completely different story. As an alternative, the Rangers appear like they'd a case of the too-many-passes and had been held to only a single objective for the second sport in a row.
It’s true, the officiating was everywhere, together with an egregious no-call on a headlock that Jan Rutta put Kaapo Kakko in late within the third interval. It prompted the Backyard crowd to inform the referees what they considered them. Spoiler: It wasn’t sort.
So did head coach Gerard Gallant suppose the Rangers ought to’ve gotten extra than simply the one energy play that they did?
“I did, I actually did,” he mentioned. “In saying that, I assumed they did a wonderful sport. They let the groups play sufficient. I assumed we may’ve had a pair extra, there’s little doubt.”
Missed alternatives and missed penalties apart, nevertheless, the Rangers didn’t do sufficient offensively to outplay the Lightning.
Ryan Lindgren scored the Rangers’ lone objective off a protracted shot from the left wing that snuck by Lightning goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy, who gave up a five-on-five objective for the primary time since Sport 2. However Tampa Bay scored three unanswered, one from Mikhail Sergachev, one from Palat and an empty-netter from Brandon Hagel, to turn out to be the primary staff on this sequence to win on the highway.
There might have been two shorthanded stretches and one energy play for the Rangers, however no member of the Child Line noticed greater than 11:03 of ice time at even power. The trio of Alexis Lafreniere, Filip Chytil and Kakko additionally solely had 4 shifts within the center body.
Granted, Chytil additionally struggled on faceoffs. The Czech middle gained simply 2 of 9 (22.2 p.c), which additionally in all probability performed into the third line’s lack of ice time. Each Chytil and Mika Zibanejad, who went 7 of 16 on the dots, had been dominated on faceoffs.
“Simply the best way I coached the sport,” mentioned Gallant, who added that there wasn’t any particular cause for the youngsters’ decrease time on ice. “Making an attempt to match up slightly bit. They performed OK.”
Gallant did decide to scratch Ryan Reaves for the primary time in these playoffs in favor of Kevin Rooney, who gave the fourth line a speedier look with out the veteran enforcer. There have been some extracurricular actions after the ultimate horn that the Rangers may’ve used Reaves for, however the matchup with the Lightning’s fourth line was largely efficient.
Nonetheless, the Rangers are actually on the point of elimination for a sixth time this postseason. They’ll have at hand Tampa Bay simply its second loss at house within the playoffs — and the primary since Sport 3 of the primary spherical towards Toronto — to ship this Jap Convention Closing sequence again to the Backyard for a Sport 7.
The Rangers have overcome larger odds within the final month or so, however the Lightning appear to make their very own luck.
“We’ve been down 3-2 each sequence to this point,” Copp mentioned. “We've got to have a degree of desperation. I believe the arrogance of doing it earlier than is greater and higher than having to do it once more. I believe there’s the assumption within the room.”
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