The Rangers have now gone through three phases of Lightning abuse.
First, they got whipped by their old friends now playing for Tampa Bay. Then they hung close and still lost.
Monday night at the Garden, in the teams' third meeting of the season, the Blueshirts got a new version of despair, this one likely the toughest to take. They outplayed the Lightning for most of the night, and still found a way to lose it in the third period, turning a 3-3 tie with 20 minutes left into a disheartening 6-3 loss.
"I think it's going to be a good test for us to see where we stand against one of the best teams in the league," forward Rick Nash said before the game. "We've been pretty good lately, but we have to be consistent."
Good for the Rangers (11-9-4) has meant beating down on the lifeless Flyers over the weekend, taking a home-and-home by the combined score of 8-2. Yet before that, the Rangers piled up two losses to the Lightning (17-6-2), who have established themselves as one of the league's best.
So on this night, when the Blueshirts needed their best player, goalie Henrik Lundqvist, he played one of his worst games of the season. Lundqvist gave up two goals apiece to Tyler Johnson and Brett Connolly, and stopped just 15 of the 20 shots he faced.
Four minutes into the third period, with the score tied, Martin St. Louis was called for slashing, and that's when Connolly took a wrist shot from the high slot, across his body, to beat Lundqvist's blocker and make it 4-3. Just 1:24 later, Kevin Klein coughed up the puck behind his own net, and Nikita Kucherov found Johnson for his second of the night to make it 5-3. Ondrej Palat sealed things with an empty-netter in the waning seconds.
"I do know that this team is the highest-scoring team in the league," coach Alain Vigneault said. "You can't do it with a B-game, you can't do it with a B-plus game. You need your A-game."
The second period was all Rangers, as it started 2:42 in when Derick Brassard made a patient play to find Jesper Fast, who directed it in for his second in as many games, tying it 2-2. Seven minutes later, they went up 3-2 when St. Louis buried a rebound on the power play. There had been a pregame ceremony for St. Louis getting his 1,000th career point this weekend, and after the goal, the Garden crowd started chanting his name.
Yet the Blueshirts then took two penalties in sequence, and had to kill 1:20 of a 5-on-3 disadvantage. That they did. But 26 seconds after the power play ended, after a Ryan McDonagh clearing attempt was stopped by his old buddy, Anton Stralman, the ensuing play inside the Rangers' zone ended with Matt Carle netting one from the left circle, taking a 3-3 score into the third period.
"Obviously, they're one of the top teams in the Eastern Conference," Brassard had said, his team up in shots 24-13 after two periods. "We always want to see where we're at as a team. There's nothing better than facing good teams. They get the best out of your team and players."
The Rangers began the game with a mostly flat first period, going down 6:32 in when Palat made a great touch-pass to Johnson, who had the whole net to tap in his first of the night for a 1-0 lead. About six minutes later, Carl Hagelin managed to find Kevin Hayes, who netted one for the Rangers to tie it 1-1. Yet that knot lasted only four minutes until Connolly made a nifty move around Marc Staal to fire a shot from the high slot that beat a screened Lundqvist, giving Tampa Bay a 2-1 lead going into the second.
"There is a reason they're up in the standings," Nash said.
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