This nightmare just doesn’t seem to end for the New York Rangers.
On Saturday afternoon, the Rangers were embarrassed at Madison Square Garden losing, 5-1 to the Los Angeles Kings.
From the start of the contest, New York just looked completely lost out there.
All five of the Kings’ goals came off of inexcusable defensive breakdowns from the Rangers as the team left Igor Shesterkin out to dry.
Everything reached a boiling point in the second period when the Rangers gave up three goals in 2:18 minutes, resulting in Peter Laviolette pulling Igor Shesterkin for Jonathan Quick.
The Rangers were lifeless. It’s one thing to get blown out, but it’s even worse to get blown out while also showing no sense of urgency or intensity, and that’s exactly what happened to the Rangers.
“It’s frustrating,” Peter Laviolette said. “To start a game like that in our building after playing some of the games we have in our building, it’s bad.”
Is it a lack of effort? Is it a lack of focus? What is wrong with the Rangers? This team is running out of excuses and have no answers regarding the root of all their issues.
“It goes all around,” Laviolette said on where the blame falls.
Laviolette was then asked about if his players are losing focus and he simply couldn’t answer the question.
“I can’t answer that,” Laviolette said.
There is just no fight in the Rangers and players know that. It’s the struggles on the ice and the outside noise that continues to derail the Blueshirts.
“At times yes, but it needs to be better,” Vincent Trocheck said about if he’s seen enough fight from the team. “We are letting a lot of things get to us and we need to make sure we are focusing on what we are doing and not letting things get to us mentally I guess.”
It took a little bit longer for the locker room to open up following the game with the players potentially talking things through, but Trocheck refused to reveal the conversations going on following this brutal loss.
“What we say in here stays in here,” Trocheck said. “There’s a lot of things that you can say, but at the end of the day, you need to perform on the ice. You need to make sure you show up and give it your all every shift. Right now, I feel like we’re not doing that.”
The Rangers are spiraling out of control and if something is not fixed quickly, their season will get out of hand if it hasn’t already.
