The Rangers couldn’t be full steam ahead for the entire final stretch of the season.
And so the in-game resolve and resiliency they’d shown off in the previous few weeks came out too late in a 5-2 loss to the Penguins on Monday night at Madison Square Garden, which brought the Blueshirts’ impressive five-game win streak to a halt.
It was the Rangers’ fifth loss since the start of March, over which the club went 10-3-1 while facing some of the top teams in the NHL.
The Penguins, who were ranked 22nd in the league and second-to-last in the Metropolitan Division at the start of the game, are not the team they were just two seasons ago, when they lost a 3-1 series lead on the Rangers in the first round of the 2022 playoffs.
But Pittsburgh looked like a team fighting for its pride, while the Rangers didn’t look like they were fighting for anything at all.
The Rangers chased the puck all night.
There wasn’t much — if any — emotion in their game.
That hindered their physicality and allowed the Penguins to have their way for a majority of the night.
The Rangers had one of their worst periods in a while through the opening 20 minutes of this game.
Falling behind 2-0 on goals from Bryan Rust and Sidney Crosby, the Blueshirts were all out of sorts in the defensive zone and could not generate much of anything in the offensive zone.
They mishandled the puck, including goaltender Igor Shesterkin, while the Penguins generated quality opportunities off the Rangers’ mistakes.
The Rangers even challenged the Crosby goal for offside, but lost and had to go down a man.
In their second game back as a defensive pairing, Jacob Trouba and K’Andre Miller were on for both of the Penguins’ first two goals.
Trouba’s defensive-zone giveaway that led to Rust’s 1-0 score was the first of the nine turnovers the Rangers were charged with in the first period.
It could’ve been a different game if Mika Zibanejad’s score on an early power play in the second period counted, but the refs immediately waved it off for goalie interference.
Chris Kreider’s right skate got in the way of Penguins goalie Alex Nedeljkovic on the play.
That was all the Rangers came close to producing in the middle frame, which saw the home team hold an 11-8 edge in shots on goal.
Kaapo Kakko started the Rangers’ too-little-too-late third-period rally with a goal at the 10:42 mark, when the Finnish wing’s one-timer went right into Nedeljkovic’s glove behind the goal post.
Upon review, the shot was deemed a goal and was Kakko’s 12th of the season.
The Rangers then managed to make it a 3-2 game off a Jack Roslovic goal, but empty-net goals from Rust and Crosby secured the win for Pittsburgh.
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