Dandy Don Meredith used to sing "turn out the lights the party's over" when the result of the Monday Night Football had been decided. If he isn't already singing, he certainly is warming up his voice, because it sure looks over. New York lost - again - Monday, 5-1 to Tampa Bay making their playoff hopes dim even more. The Rangers sit six points shy of the Canadiens with five games to go and could be passed by both the Islanders and Blue Jackets, each of whom have a game in hand and are just two points behind New York.

Game recap:






Rangers lines vs. Lightning:

Panarin-Trocheck-Lafrenière
Cuylle-Miller-Zibanejad
Kreider-Carrick-Perreault
Othmann-Brodzinski-Rempe

Soucy-Fox
Jones-Borgen
Vaakanainen-Schneider

Shesterkin
Quick

Scratches: K'Andre Miller (illness), Berard, Kaliyev (upper-body), de Haan, Pärssinen, Aube-Kubel
IR: Edström (lower-body)

A few thoughts:
1) Special teams: yesterday's game was lost - as so many others have been recently - on special teams. The once stout penalty kill faltered again, allowing goals on back-to-back chances, which all but sealed the game. At 3-1 and pushing to make it a one-goal game, it was tic-tac-toe, Nikita Kucherov to Jake Guentzel to Brayden Point for the tap-in tally and lights out. There are times when you need your PK to come up big to change the momentum or keep the game scoreless or close. In the past, the Blueshirts' were up to that task. This season, especially of late, not at all.

New York went 1-for-3, but the one goal seemed like window dressing. That tally made the Rangers 3-for-45 on the power play. As bad as this season has been, how much of a difference might have been made recently if the PP. - and also the PK - had done their jobs? The Blueshirts relied too much on their goaltending and special teams in winning the Presidents' Trophy last year and making a run to the ECF in 2022. How ironic is it that both aspects, but especially special teams, have let them down.

2) Work ethic: It's not just special teams. If you watched the goals, Tampa Bay outworked New York. The Rangers were the better team the first 8-10 minutes of the first period. Coach Jon Cooper lit a fire under his team on the bench and the team took off from there. They won puck battles, they outworked the Rangers down low and on the boards. The game aspects you can control nightly is work ethic and the ability to win 1:1 battles. New York has failed in this regard all season long.

3) Game play: the Rangers posted 11 of the first 12 shots, looking solid in all three zones. Then a bad penalty by Chris Kreider, who I hate to say likely should be benched, opened the floodgates. Two tallies in 36 seconds, three in 1:45 and it was all she wrote. Part of that was aided by a turnover by Adam Fox deep in the offensive zone that sprung a 3-on-2 and Will Cuylle got caught reaching rather than being in the right position.

Way too often, it's been a bad turnover followed by poor positional play and the puck ended up in the Rangers net.  New York played a fairly good second and third period, but Andrei Vasilevskiy came up big when needed and special teams made a difference as well.

4) Congrats to Jonathan Quick who was named the 2024-25 recipient of the Mr. Ranger Award, which recognizes the Rangers player "who best honors Rob's legacy by exemplifying leadership qualities both on and off the ice and making a significant humanitarian contribution to his community." Quick certainly lived up to those ideals and is well-deserving of this honor.



5) Next steps: with the season just about over, play the kids. Give Brennan Othmann and Gabe Perreault all the ice time in as many key situations as possible. Once the season ends, take a flamethrower and try and eradicate the stink on the ice, in the locker room and in the franchise. The comment from Peter Laviolette in the post-game presser is evident of just how far out of touch the coaching staff might be, or rather than throw the team under the bus, he opted to not say anything. But there are better ways to express that rather than saying he doesn't go in the locker room after games.

I am out of pocket Friday night to Monday night due to the Sabbath and Passover.

Follow @airjan23 

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