Rangers bring road game back home among takeaways from 6-3 loss to Kings

If you didn’t know any better, you would’ve thought the New York Rangers were playing on the road Monday night, and not at Madison Square Garden. It’s not just that the Rangers lost their first game at home this season, but more so the manner with which they dropped a 6-3 decision to the Los Angeles Kings.

Slow start. Early goals against. Chasing the game. Largely uninspired and unstructured play defensively. Subpar goaltending. Not nearly enough offensive chances nor zone time.

You name it, and the Rangers (7-6-1) were pretty much deficient in that facet of the game.

That this mess happened on home ice stands out because the Rangers were not only a perfect 6-0-0 at MSG this season, scoring first in all six games, but they hadn’t trailed for a single second of the 360 minutes played previously in their building.

Of course, that was impossible to keep up over a 42-game home schedule. But the fact that the Rangers brought all the bad elements from their poor road play back home with them after a winless trek to Canada late last week was at least a bit unexpected.

With 38-year-old James Reimer making his Rangers debut between the pipes, neither he nor his teammates were up to the Kings fast start Monday. A neutral zone breakdown in the middle of the ice led to Taylor Ward breaking in all alone to beat Reimer between the pads on the first shot of the game just 1:15 into the first period. The Kings then made it 2-0 at 4:52, when Joel Armia’s cross-crease pass was buried by Brandt Clarke during a 6-on-5 with an extended delayed penalty.

Sure J.T. Miller had a Tye Kartye pass go in off this skates at 13:01 on New York’s second recorded shot of the period, but Drew Doughty answered right back for L.A. at 17:32, sending a long shot past Reimer to make it 3-1.

Coach Mike Sullivan pulled Reimer after the first period, and Dylan Garand promptly gave up a power-play goal to former Rangers star Artemi Panarin at 1:30 of the second, and Mikey Anderson drove a long slap shot through his pads at 6:54.

The Rangers actually caught a break 32 seconds later when Clarke pushed the puck over the goal line to seemingly make it 6-1. Sullivan’s coach’s challenge proved successful when it was ruled that Clarke shoved Garand’s glove with his stick to send the puck in, making for goalie interference.

The rest was the rest, the Rangers got to within 5-3 at 16:08 of the third period, but an empty-net goal 29 seconds later iced the win for the Kings. If some or all of this sounds similar to New York’s 7-4 road loss to the Ottawa Senators on Saturday and the 5-4 road defeat in Toronto against the Maple Leafs on Thursday, well that’s because it was eerily similar. Except that the locale was MSG, where only good things happened to this point for the Rangers.

The Rangers had allowed two first-period goals in six home games this season. They surrendered three on Monday to an offensively challenged team that was tied for 28th in goal-scoring entering the game. The Kings scored one goal in four of their first nine games, including a 3-1 loss to the New Jersey Devils on Saturday.

Eeven with this being their first loss on home ice, the Rangers are on a season-worst three-game losing streak and are 1-4-1 in their past six games. In that stretch, they’ve given up 28 goals, including seven twice, six once, and five once.

That’s not a winning formula for any team. And playing from behind isn’t a winning formular for the Rangers, who are 0-5-1 when the opposition scores first, 0-4-0 when trailing after one period, and 0-5-0 when behind following two periods of play.

It used to be just on the road. But now the same issues took hold back home at The Garden. And that’s a big problem for the Rangers right now.

Key takeaways after Rangers lose 6-3 to Kings

Reimer pulled in debut, Garand takes loss

This wasn’t exactly how Reimer wanted his Rangers debut to go. He allowed goals on the first two shots he faced, though he was victimized by shoddy defensive play by his teammates on each one. Certainly, facing a partial breakaway 1:15 into his first NHL game since last April and two weeks removed from working out with a pair of junior teams in Western Canada, as unfortunate. As was the goal Ward slipped between his pads.

The 38-year-old’s night last 20 minutes of game time, pulled after surrendering three goals on eight shots — though he did make one sensational diving stop to rob Quinto Byfield on the doorstep. Reimer was seen on the Rangers bench in the second period shaking his head and laughing. Better than crying, right?

Garand allowed a goal on the second shot he faced, when Panarin hammered one that hit his arm and the far post before crossing the goal line. To his credit, Garand pulled himself together after that disallowed goal by Clarke at 7:26, and actually made several timely saves to allow the Rangers to crawl back into the game — somewhat — late in the third period. He stopped 15 of 17 shots and was saddled with the loss when Kartye scored New York’s third at 16:08 of the third.

“Let’s just acknowledge we’re in a difficult circumstance when our top two goalies are injured. So, we’re trying to find a way to shore this thing up as best we can,” Sullivan said afterward about playing without injured goalies Igor Shesterkin (season-ending knee surgery) and Joonas Korpisalo (out until November due to a foot infection).

“I think Dylan has given us some really good games, and as I said to you guys, his workload is mounting. And then for ‘Reims’ to come in the way he has, in short order, going into a game like this, it’s not an easy challenge. It’s a tough challenge, and I just felt like the way the game was going, I just felt like maybe Reims needs a little bit more preparation before we put him in that circumstance. … I put him in a tough spot. That’s that’s on me.”

Rangers switch defense pairs

Sullivan had seen enough from the past handful of games with the struggling second defense pair of Marcus Pettersson and Sean Durzi that, after another slow start Monday, he broke the duo up. Pettersson and Durzi were flamed on the Kings first goal, when Ward blew right between the defenders to score his first goal of the season. They were also on ice for the second goal, part of a group fail allowing Clarke to zip in wide open for a redirection.

Sullivan swapped Braden Schneider in for Durzi as Pettersson’s partner, and Durzi finished the night with 18-year-old rookie Alberts Smits.

“I think the last five or six [games], it’s been a little bit of a struggle for them, for whatever reason,” Sullivan explained postgame. “‘Durz’ is battling through some stuff physically and I’m sure that might be part of it. But we just felt to affect a little bit of change, maybe we’ll split the pairs and see what we get. It wasn’t a reaction to the game tonight, it was an accumulation of events over the course of the last probably four or five games.”

Durzi logged 15:10 TOI, roughly five minutes less than his average entering the game. He blocked three shots and finished minus-1. Pettersson played 22:07, third most among Rangers defensemen, was minus-1, and blocked two shots. His expected goal share 5v5 was 68.85 percent, per Natural Stat Trick. Schneider played a season-high 20:24.

Adam Fox’s milestone 500th game

Speaking of Rangers defensemen, Adam Fox reached a significant NHL milestone by playing his 500th game. And though there wasn’t much celebrating in this one, Fox did score his first goal of the season, increasing his point total to a team-high 17 and extending his current point streak to four games (one goal, seven assists).

The 2021 Norris Trophy winner as top NHL defenseman now has 439 points (73 goals, 366 assists) in his 500 NHL games. He’s 10th in Rangers history with those 366 assists, and third all-time among Blueshirts defensemen behind Brian Leetch (741) and Ron Greschner (431).

Good time for a break

No team in the NHL has played more games than the Rangers, and only one, the Toronto Maple Leafs, has played as many their 14. Now, it’s time for the rest of the League to play catch up. The Rangers do not playagain until Sunday, when they host Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers at MSG.

The break can’t come at a better time with the Rangers struggling to find their collective game after a fairly blazing — and surprising — 6-2-0 start. They’ll have a day off Tuesday, followed by several practice days to work on their issues.

Ron Duguay tribute at MSG

There was a moment of silence before the National Anthem to honor former Rangers icon Ron Duguay, who died last week at 69, after battling colon cancer. Then during a TV timeout in the second period, there was a tribute video followed by Duguay’s family on-camera inside The Garden. Duguay’s three grown children, their spouses, and six grand-children, along with his significant other Sarah Palin, were showered with cheers by the Garden Faithful, bringing the adults in Duguay’s family to tears in an emotional moment that resonated with all even despite the status of the game on this night.

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